1. UNIDAD 1 CREATIVIDAD «How to Kill Creativity» Teresa M. Amabile
Noviembre 2013

2. What is Business Creativity?
Ideas must be appropriate, useful and actionable
Thinking imaginatively is only one part of the creative equation
Two other essential components are expertise and motivation
Creativity
Creative Thinking Skills
Expertise
Motivation

3. What is Business Creativity?
Expertise
(Knowledge: technical, procedural, intellectual)
Encompasses everything that a person knows and can do in the broad domain of his or her work
Knowledge and technical abilities
Intellectual space used to explore and solve problems
Creative Thinking Skills
How people approach problems and solutions
Thinking Styles
Turns problems upside down
Combines from seemingly disparate fields
Personality
Comfort with disagreeing with others
Departs from status quo
Work Styles
Persevere
Incubation
Fresh perspectives

4. What is Business Creativity?
Motivation
passion and interest
determines what people will actually do
different types have different impact on creativity
Extrinsic
Root of creativity problems in business
Comes from outside a person (either a carrot or a stick)
Most common is money
Doesn’t stop people from being creative
Doesn’t help either
Doesn’t by itself make employees passionate about their work
Intrinsic
Person’s natural interest to do something
Engaged in work for the challenge and enjoyment of it
Work itself is motivating
People most creative when interested, satisfied and challenged by work itself

5. Managing Creativity Challenge Freedom Resources Work-group features
Managerial practices and techniques that affect intrinsic
motivation will affect creativity yield more immediate results
Challenge
Freedom
Resources
Work-group features
Supervisory encouragement
Organizational support

6. Managing Creativity – Six Practices
Challenge
Simple task of matching people with the right assignments
Most effective practice
Perfect matches stretch employees abilities
Amount of stretch is crucial
Not so little, bored
No so much, overwhelmed and threatened
Requires rich and detailed information about employees and available assignments

7. Managing Creativity – Six Practices
Freedom
Autonomy concerning the means
More creativity, if allowed to decide how to climb mountain
Clearly specified strategic goals often enhance people’s creativity
Clarity and stability of goals meaningful period of time
Autonomy heightens intrinsic motivation and sense of ownership
Must grant autonomy in more than name only

8. Managing Creativity – Six Practices
Resources
Time
Can heighten creativity
Along with importance of work, people feel that they need to rush
Increases intrinsic motivation by increasing sense of challenge
Fake deadlines and impossibly tight ones create distrust and burnout
Creativity takes time, needs incubation and exploration
Funding, People and other resources
Adding more resource above “threshold of sufficiency” does not boost creativity
Below that threshold restriction can dampen
When resources kept tight, people channel creativity into finding additional resources
May be helpful for open and comfortable

9. Managing Creativity – Six Practices
Work-group features
Create mutually supportive groups with a diversity of perspectives and backgrounds
Different expertise and creative thinking styles often combine and combust ideas in exciting and useful ways
Diversity is only starting point, team members must
Share excitement over the goals
display a willingness to help their team mates through difficult time periods and setbacks
Recognize the unique knowledge and perspectives that other members bring to the table
Requires that managers have a deep understanding of their people (i.e. their knowledge, potential, work and problem solving styles and motivational hot buttons)
Homogenous teams are a creative danger
Reach solutions more quickly, with less friction and high morale
Do little to enhance expertise and creative thinking
Come to table with same mind set; leave with the same

10. Managing Creativity – Six Practices
Supervisory encouragement
Praise for creative efforts (not just creative successes but unsuccessful efforts) falls by the side
Intrinsic motivation comes from passion for their work
Sustainability for this passion, people must feel their work matters
Freely and generously recognize creative work by individuals and teams
Look for reasons to explore new ideas further
Work to eliminate the negative bias of a culture of evaluation
Leads people to focus on external rewards
Creates a climate of fear
Treatment of those whose ideas don’t pan out
Perception of no “failure value” correlates to less experimentation, exploration and connection with work on personal level
Serve as a role model

11. Managing Creativity – Six Practices
Organizational support
Creativity is truly enhanced when the entire organization
supports it by
Emphasizing that creativity is top priority
Put in place appropriate systems or procedures
Reinforce values that emphasize this priority mindset
Mandating information sharing and collaboration
Ensuring that political problems do not fester

12. From the Individual to the Organization
Key Success Factors for Leading/Obtaining Creativity Culture
Forming Teams
Make excellent matches between people and assignments
Relatively small (4-9 members)
Diverse professional and ethnic backgrounds
Communication with and within Teams
Clarify goals at the outset
Periodic checks on workflow direction
Autonomy (real freedom) to teams for day-to-day operations and implementation of goals
Support to Teams
Team members mutually supportive
Supervisory encouragement and organizational support must be widespread
Seek support from all units within their divisions and encourage collaboration across all quarters

13. Great Rewards and Risks
Radically change the ways in which we build and interact with workgroups
Calls for conscious culture change
Great Risks
Lose a potent competitive weapon: new ideas
Lose energy and commitment of its people

14. Suggested Readings
Creativity in Context: Update to the Social Psychology of Creativity by Teresa M. Amabile (1996) User’s Manual for KEYS: Assessing the Climate for Creativity by Teresa M. Amabile, Robert Burnside, and Stanley S. Gryskiewicz (1998) Rosabeth Moss Kanter on the Frontiers of Management by Rosabeth Moss Kanter (1997)