Creativity is defined as the production of novel and useful ideas, while innovation is the successful implementation of creative ideas. Creativity comes from both individuals and groups and is influenced by factors at the individual, group, and organizational levels. At the individual level, factors include personality, motivation, intelligence, and experience. At the group level, factors involve diversity, cooperation, and encouragement of ideas. At the organizational level, resources, management practices, culture, and incentives can support or hinder creativity. The cognitive neuroscience of creativity involves both emotional processing in the brain and cognitive flexibility carried out by the prefrontal cortex. Different types of creativity arise from spontaneous insights, deliberate problem-solving, emotional associations, and unconscious thinking.

1. Factors influencing
creativity and
innovation--- creativity
B.V.L.NARAYANA
SPTM

2. Definitions (Amabile et al 1996)
• Creativity is defined as
• Production of novel and useful ideas in any domain
• SEE ORDER IN DISORDER
• Innovation is defined as
• Successful implementation of creative ideas in any organisation
• Creativity of individuals and teams is the starting point for
innovation
• Creativity and innovation are important
• Life is becoming increasingly complex, fast and changing at a
faster pace
• Allows adaptation, maintain flexibility and is part of decision
making
• Creativity requires originality and flexibility
• Contributes to physical and psychological health and optimal
functioning

3. Factors influencing creativity
• Factors
• Individual level
• Group and organisational level
Category of
factors
Factors (Based on Amabile et al
1996)
Motivation Organisational motivation to innovate is the basic
orientation towards innovation and supports for creativity
and innovation
Resources Everything that an organisation has to aid work in
domain targeted for innovation including training
Management
practices
Refers to allowance of freedom in conduct of work,
provision of challenging and interesting work,
specification of clear strategic goals, formation of work
teams with diverse skills and perspectives, focus on
technology and reward and incentive structures
Group
characteristics
Norms, group cohesiveness, size , diversity, roles, task
characteristics, and problem solving approaches used

5. Factors affecting creativity
Category Factors (Amabile et al 1996)
Organisational
encouragement
Encouraging of risk taking and idea generation at all levels
Fair supportive evaluation of new ideas, Reward and
recognition of creativity, collaborative idea flow and
participatory decision making
Supervisory
encouragement
Goal clarity and clarity of problem definition, open
interactions, support for team work and ideas,
Work group
encouragement
Diversity of team members background, mutual openness to
ideas, constructive challenging of ideas, shared commitment
Autonomy Autonomy in day to day conduct of work, sense of ownership
and control over work and ideas
Resources Adequacy of allocation indicating importance, time
Pressures Excessive work load pressure, challenge due to intrinsic nature
Organisational
impediments
Internal strife, conservatism, rigid and formal management
structures

6. Factors at individual level
• Age –
• creativity decreases with age unless individual is intentionally
creative
• Intelligence-
• certain level required for certain measures of creativity only.
• Personality-
• high valuation of aesthetic qualities in experiences, interests,
attraction to complexity, independence of judgment, autonomy,
intuition , self confidence, ability to resolve conflicting traits in self
and belief that self is creative
• Dispositions-
• high level of intrinsic motivation, follow intrinsic interests, free
from evaluations and constraints
• Capabilities
• Insight is a result of integration of previously learned behaviors
• potential

7. Processes influencing creativity
• Associative process is involved in divergent thinking and
problem solving
• Cognitive flexibility-process by which obvious patterns of
thinking are discarded and new higher order rules are
adopted
• Intrinsic motivation –process where people feel motivated
by interest, challenge and satisfaction of work itself
• Creative thinking is capacity to put existing ideas in new
combinations and is facilitated by diversity of experience
and learning
• Divergent thinking –process by which one extrapolates
many possible answers to an initial stimulus or target data
• Intuition of flash intelligence- flash of a recognition that
problem is solved
• Flow- when person is fully immersed in what is being done
and has a feeling of energized focus, shows full
involvement and success and excludes other stimuli

8. Pressures or impediments
• Two types-alpha and beta
• Alpha is objective
• Beta is based on individuals interpretations
• Positive pressures
• freedom, autonomy, good role models and resources
(including time), encouragement specifically for
originality, freedom from criticism, and “norms in
which innovation is prized and failure not fatal”
• Inhibiting pressures
• lack of respect (specifically for originality), red tape,
constraint, lack of autonomy and resources,
inappropriate norms, project management, feedback,
time pressure, competition, and unrealistic expectations

9. Resources influencing creativity
• Time
• Original ideas are remote with respect to
original problem
• Creative ideas require time for incubation

10. Demographic factors
• Birth order
• Middle born children are more creative
• family size
• Number of siblings
• Interval among siblings
• Family and school atmosphere
• Large families have authoritarian structures
• Freedom and autonomy facilitates creativity

11. Neurological factors
• Creativity reflects originality and appropriateness,
intuition and logic. It requires both hemispheres
• Requires consistent communication among many
areas in brain and increased emotional expression
• Defocused attention
• Knowledge –declarative, factual, tactics or
procedural knowledge
• Intuition, ability to consider two different
perspectives simultaneously, incubation,
imagination

12. Cognitive neuroscience of creativity
• Creative thinking is the result of ordinary mental
processes
• Human information processing is hierarchically
structured and creative mentation lies at the
highest—prefrontal cortex
• Two different types of neural systems
• Emotional brain-attaches a value tag to incoming
information and enables evaluation of its biological
significance—does “Me-relevant computation”
• Perceptual brain- performs detailed feature analysis of
incoming information enabling construction of
sophisticated representations that form basis for
cognitive processing
• Both the systems can be dissociated anatomically and
processually.

13. Cognitive neuroscience of creativity
• Executive function—consisting of integrating of
processed information, formulation of plans and
strategies for appropriate behavior and instruction
of adjacent motor cortices for execution-requires
both systems
• Emotional Process of evaluating the significance of
complex social situations—Me-relevant emotions
• Cognitive process of Selective attention and Feature
analysis leading to mental models
• Each have separate memories which track their
activities
• Full reintegration of these systems occurs in the pre-
frontal cortex
• At all levels of functional hierarchy neural structures
have direct access to activation of the motor system

14. Cognitive neuroscience of creativity
• Pre-frontal cortex performs executive functions and
thus is central to creative thinking
• Enables higher cognitive functions such as self
construct, self reflective consciousness, abstract
thinking, complex social functions, cognitive flexibility,
planning, and willed action
• Other cognitive functions are working memory,
temporal integration and sustained and directed
attention
• Two main parts
• Ventero-medial –connected to higher order emotional
processing system—does social function through “me-
relevant” assessment
• Dorso-medial- connected to higher order information and
cognitive processing systems—does working memory,
cognitive flexibility, temporal integration, ordering and
sequencing and directed attention

15. Process of creativity
• Every neural circuit can compute specific
information and also produce novel combinations
• More integrative the neural structure more
combinational novelty can occur
• Appropriateness is a function of higher order
structures that assess a complex and changing set
of rules or values implicit in persons culture. This
generates a selection process which selects the
appropriate idea out of many
• Four types of creativity based on types of
structures and processing modes

16. Types of creativity
Attention is related to
retrieval of affective
memory. Insights depend
upon specific emotion and
conform to persons values
and norms. It is independent
of domain knowledge
Attention is related to search
for task related information.
Quality of insights depends
upon expertise and how
flexible cognitively the pre-
frontal cortex is—domain
independent trait. Creativity is
domain specific.
Occur when neural activity
of emotional structures is
spontaneously represented
in working memory after an
intense emotional activity/
experience. Are not domain
specific. Require specific
skills. Called revelation
Insight has origin in associative
unconscious thinking when
thresholds are lowered
(Incubation) . Do not conform
to convention. Become
conscious when represented in
working memory. Depend upon
expertise
Deliberate
Spontaneous
Emotional
Cognitive

17. Impediments to business creativity
(Amabile 1998)
• Business creativity-requires both originality and
appropriateness
• Six set of factors impede business creativity
• Challenge—match work to persons capabilities
• Freedom- autonomy to choose process not ends
• Resources-appropriate time and money
• Work group features—mutually supportive with diversity
of perspectives and backgrounds
• Supervisory support—in form of extrinsic rewards, praise,
foster collaboration, communication
• Organisational support- leaders who put in place systems
and processes which support creativity-support failures

19. Intrinsic
motivation
CREATIVITY
Expertise
Creative
thinking
skills
THANKS-ANY QUESTIONS