Cross cultural differences in approaches to creativity and innovation present challenges for corporate management. The West focuses on creativity as a product, process, personality, and environment, while the East emphasizes process and personality through meditation and spirituality. African conceptions also stress process and personality through creative works, observation, and figures like Chinua Achebe. For management, the challenges are to recognize cultural differences in creativity, champion it while attuning to variations, and encourage innovation through tools integrating diverse perspectives.

1. Cross cultural differences in approaches to
creativity and innovation: the challenge for
corporate management
Presentation for Mini-Conference
at the Vrije Universiteit [VU]
Amsterdam, 28th April 2009
James Ogunleye, PhD FRSA
Middlesex University, London, UK

2. Introduction - key terms defined
• Culture: ‘collective programming of the mind [i.e. way of
thinking, learning, processing information, perception of
others, etc] which distinguishes the members of one group
or category of people from another’ (Hofstede, 1991, p.5)
• Corporate Management: ‘The people who administer a
company, create policies, and provide the support
necessary to implement the owners' business objectives.’
(Harvey, 2004). Corporate management can also be
characterised as an act of getting things done – or
accomplishing organisation goals – through people. It is all
about the effective harnessing of human and material
resources of the organisation towards achieving common
goals.

3. Creativity and innovation as conjoined
twins?
• Not much universal agreement among psychologists and
subject investigators on the definition of creativity and what
counts as a demonstration of creativity, and neither do
investigators ‘share’ a language for creativity (Welsh, 1973;
Ford and Harris, 1992; Parkhurst, 1999; Joubert, 2001).
• Creativity: Amar (2007) sees creativity as the ‘mother’ of
innovation. We could also say creativity fuels innovation.
• Innovation: Ogunleye (2001; 2006) and Majoro (1991)
characterise innovation as the ‘bi-product’ or technological
‘outcome’ of creativity.
• In essence, the terms creativity and innovation are often
used interchangeably. A study by Sternberg and O’Hara
(1999) concludes that creativity and innovation are
essentially – perhaps broadly – the same things.

4. Overlapping themes of creativity
Traditionally, definitions of creativity are explored under the
following largely overlapping themes (see Ogunleye, 2008):
• product
• process
• personality
• environment
Therefore, work on creativity and culture or discourses on
cross cultural approaches to creativity are situated in one or
more of the traditional themes of creativity.

5. cross cultural approaches to creativity
Western conceptions
Creativity as a product
• Novelty and appropriateness. In other words, creative
products/result or outcome a creative act has to be original
and useful. Indeed, originality is a concept central to
creative product... here, there is an intense focus on
innovative products.
Creativity as a process
• Relates to a person’s ability. Mayer (1989) defines process
creativity as ‘the ability to solve problems that an individual
might not have previously learned to solve.’ Ability to
produce work that is judged by others as novel and
appropriate (Lubart and Sternberg, 1998, p.66). In
essence, process creativity is intertwined with a problem-
solving ability.

6. cross cultural approaches to creativity
Western conceptions
Creativity as a personality
• Relates to how a person’s cognitive skills and their
emotional experience shape creative outcome. Wason
(1968) defines personality creativity as an ‘aesthetic
cognitive and emotional operation’ which seeks to find
solutions to a problem.
• Fisher (1990) relates creativity to human attitudes and
abilities which, together, ‘lead a person to produce creative
thought, ideas or images.’ on intuition, Intuition is key in
personality creativity – it is something that a person has to
use to make connections in a fruitful and productive way.
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI-Creativity Index) and
Trompenaars’ (2007) Integrated Type Indicator (ITI) are
profoundly situated in the personality creativity.

7. cross cultural approaches to creativity
Creativity as a condition of the environment in which
people live and/or operate
• the environment nurtures, enriches, and sensorily
stimulates human creativity (Amabile, 1983; Cheyette,
1977; Taylor, 1971).
• social/cultural environmental elements, for example, can
‘create a context in which creative work’ is hinder or
facilitated; these can also ‘serve to evaluate products and
performances (Lubart and Sternberg, 1998, p.65).
• in a business organisation context, a creative environment
will affords opportunities for people [employees and
managers alike] to develop their creative potential/ or will
enable people to establish creative interactions with the
organisation.

8. cross cultural approaches to creativity
Eastern conceptions
• Product creativity: there is less emphasis/focus on
product
• Process creativity: there is strong emphasis/focus on
process, which can be through meditation or in the case of
Africans, through ‘spiritual appeals’, chanting or
incantations to a deity.
• Personality creativity: there is strong emphasis/focus on
personality, but not in exactly the same way as the West.
Personality creativity is associated with/or relates to
personal fulfilment (Chu, 1970; Kuo, 1996; Lubart and
Sternberg, 1998); morality; ‘spirituality, etc.
• Environment creativity: there is less emphasis/focus on
the environment.

9. Cross cultural approaches to creativity:
the West meets the East?
• There appears to be a strong convergence in
cross cultural constructs of creativity when
creativity is defined as a process.
• In other words, both the West and the East
perspectives on creativity place a strong
emphasis on process.
• Ironically, the similarity in the West and the East
perspectives on creativity ends almost as soon as
it begun!
• The West and the East conceptions – or what is
also known as descriptors – of creative process
differed quite significantly.

10. Western conceptions of creative
process
Descriptors
• Preparation
• Incubation
• Illumination
• Verification

11. Creative process: the Google Chrome story
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12. Creative process: the Google Chrome story

13. Creative process: the Google Chrome story

14. Creative process: the Google Chrome story

15. The East conceptions of creative
Process
East
• preparation involves prayer/
meditation for inspiration
• alignment of inner
self/being with the spirit of
the deity
• insights; rather self-focused
than subject-focused
• personal realisation; social
communication of
achievement

16. African conceptions of creativity
Swahili word for creativity is Kuumba
• product,
• process,
• personality, and
• environment creativity
are all emphasised in the African context.
• Like the East, there is strong emphasis/focus on
process and personality

17. African conceptions of creativity
• Product/outcome of creativity
101. Mask
Woven Grass Baskets (Tutsi – Rwanda, mid part 20th
century); Brown Dense Wood with Patina (Lwena/Luvale,
Zambia/Angola, mid 20th century); and a Yoruba Sculpture
(Western Nigerian, by George Bamidele)

18. Process/personality creativity: learning
by observation

19. African creative personalities
Personality creativity
• African creative writers –
Chinua Achebe (top
right) and Nobel
Laureate Wole Soyinka
have both been
acknowledged as the
‘master craftsmen for
creativity and
inventiveness’ for ‘using
various creative
strategies and devices,
to positively change the
face of the English
language’ (Ajani, 2005).

20. Summary – The West and the East/Africa –
conceptions of creative process
East/(and Africa to a
West
Descriptors degree)
• Preliminary • preparation
analysis of the involves prayer/
• Preparation problem meditation for
• active inspiration
unconscious
• Incubation • alignment of inner
work self/being with the
• a sudden burst spirit of the deity
of insight/ • insights; rather
imagination/
• Illumination self-focused than
idea/solution to subject-focused
the problem
• personal
• Evaluation of realisation; social
• Verification idea/solution; communication of
development achievement

21. Challenges for corporate management
• How creativity is understood in different culture as
represented by employees
• The need to understand the cultural
characteristics and behaviours of innovative and
creative people in the organisation (see Roffe,
1999).

22. A three-fold challenge for corporate
management
Recognising cultural
differences
Championing
in creativity and
creativity
innovation and
and innovation
attune to those
differences
Encouraging creativity
and innovation; integrate
cross cultural
differences
via Trompenaars’ (2007)
Trompenaars’
Integrated Type
Indicator [ITI] tool

23. Concluding remarks
Peng Guohui, Principal of Jindao Middle School, Guangzhou, China

24. End Note
‘Creativity is not in the person, or in the culture, but
in the interaction between the two’ (Lubart and
Sternberg, 1998, p.69).
Thank You