This document discusses understanding the creative process and managing knowledge workers. It covers several key points: 1. Creativity involves producing solutions that are both novel and appropriate. The process is not always logical or step-by-step. 2. Personality traits associated with creativity include independence, openness to new experiences, and a willingness to go against social norms. Highly creative people often pursue their own ideas despite criticism. 3. Cognitive processes like brainstorming, playing with ideas, and questioning assumptions can improve creativity. Companies that encourage dissent and debate tend to be more innovative. 4. The creative process takes time and cannot be rushed. Managing knowledge workers requires balancing conformity with freedom of thought

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Understanding the Creative Process:Understanding the Creative Process:
Management of the KnowledgeManagement of the Knowledge
WorkerWorkerChapter 4Chapter 4
Knowledge Management

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Introduction
Creativity ≠ Problem Solving
Two elements of creativity
1.It is ‘novel’
2.It has to be appropriate to the problem

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Introduction
Creative Solution is
1.Unique
2.They may even be bizarre or nonsensical
3.It be heuristic rather than algorithmic
4.The process used to arrive at a solution is not known
5.Is not a step-by-step process (but it can still be
understood)

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Introduction
Some studies attempts to explain creativity:
1.Described by typical personality traits
2.Mode of thinking that leads to creative
3.Understand creativity over the human lifespan
4.Accomplishments of “gifted children”

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Introduction
1. General Intelligence = ability to think abstractly, logically and systematically.
2. Spesific intelligence = talent in music or art or mathematic.
3. The general and the spesific types of intelligence bear some relationship to each other but are not highly
correlated.
4. General creative thinking = clever, elegant or surprising and leads to imaginative solutions.
5. Spesific creative ability possesed by people who produce novel and valuable products in the arts,
sciences, business or politics.
Most studies show a relationship between IQ and creativity there is little or no relationship.
Creativity ≠ Intellegent

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Personality = Who is Creative
• Personality tests (Barron, 1955 and MacKinnon 1962) the higly creative person were found to be
unconventional. They had ‘intelectual ability, vividness or even flamboyance of characther, moodiness
and preoccupation, courage and self centredness.
• Barron (1955: 68) suggested that creative people have an edge to them. In general the highly creative
were found to have high ego strength and flexibility and achieved successes by means of independent
effort rather than conformance. They think and associate ideas in unusual ways
• Highly creative people are independent and significantly less conforming in experimental settings than
less creative people.
• (Csikszentmilhalyi and Getzels, 1973, Albert and Runco, 1986 and MacKinnon, 1964). Personality traits
associated with creativity include independence, openness to experience, a lack of interest in social
norms and social accpetance and interestingly, a high value on the activity itself rather than on status or
money.
• Highly creative people often report that they have pursued their ideas despite advice to the contrary.
They were often told that they were wasting their time or valuable resources and had difficulty obtaining
funds for their work

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Cognitive Procesesse : a Style of Thinking
1. Uses Test, which ask people to name all the uses of a common object
such as a brick.
2. Circle Test, which ask people to sketch as many different object as
possible using 36 identical blank circles and give each sketch a name.
3. Playfulness is also considered a personality trait and tends to be
characteristic of highly creative individuals, who are often described as
‘childlike but not childish’.

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Learning from the lifespan
1. Trying to understand a person over a lifespan is a very complicated
undertaking to understand when and why creative thought turns into
creative accomplishment.
2. Interviews with creative people. the real strength was in knowing a
good question.
3. Knowing the right question may be on of the benefits of having a highly
creative mentor

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Social Context
The problems with majorities and high status
When an answer is obvious, people are likely to abandon their own position on a question
when presented with a majority position that differs from their own.
• As an illustration, Navy Bomber crews consisting of a captain, navigator adn gunner were
asked to solve this following problem : A man buys a horse for $60, sells it for $70, buys it back for
$80 and sells it again for $90. How much profit did he make?
There is a liner relationship between status acceptance of an opinion

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Technique for Improving Creativity
1. Giving Instructions (Brainstorming)
2. Devil’s advocate/dialectical enquiry: mechanism for dissent
3. The positive role of dissent
1. Dissent as liberator
2. Dissent as stimulator

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Lesson for Management
Some of the practices of those successfull companies include the following:
1.Care in requirement
2.Socialization into company’s culture
3.Use of mottoes, slogans and language
4.Dissent is ‘ejected like a virus’
All of the mechanism mentioned above are powerful tool for achieving high morale and
cohesion and promoting effort on behalf of the company

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Videos : Creativity Needs Time
Creativity needs Time.flv - YouTube.FLV

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