This document summarizes a presentation on creativity in business. It defines creativity as the ability to bring something new into existence through a process that is novel, useful, and understandable. The creative process involves preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. Characteristics of creative individuals include openness to experience, curiosity, independence, willingness to take risks, and persistence. Six things that can kill creativity are evaluation, surveillance, rewards, competition, restricted choices, and extrinsic orientation. The presentation encourages training, intrinsic motivation, allowing for failure, open communication, autonomy, flexibility, and reducing rules to foster creativity.

1. Junior Achievement in Bulgaria
Smart-Start Conference
March 23, 2010
CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS
Ellen Greenberg, M.B.A., Ph.D.
Professor, Sofia University “Kliment Ohridski”
Director, Diagnostic and Consultative Medical Center “Dr. I. S. Greenberg”
B.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
M.B.A. Ph.D., Columbia University

2. Creativity in Business
Definitions of Creativity
Ability to bring something new into existence
Process leading to a result which is novel (new), useful (satisfies an exisiting need) and
understandable, with a heuristic rather than algorhythmic (fixed rules) task
Picasso: Some painters transforms the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow
spot into the sun
Degas: a painter paints a picture with the same feeling as that which a criminal commits
a crime
Creative Process (Wallas, 1926)
• Preparation
• Incubation
• Illumination (Eureka!)
• Verification
and Exploitation, including Innovation
Pasteur – Chance favors the prepared mind
Archimedes in bathtub
Alexander Fleming, Penicillin, 1939
Mozart vs. Beethoven; Mozart approached by teenager
Cognitive Styles
Integrative Style – integrate, reorganize, or restructure existing modes
Setbreaking Style - Facility in understanding complexities and ability to break mental
state
Problem-sensing Style – see a problem others don’t notice or where none seemed to exist
Imaging
Aethetics
Characteristics of Creative Individuals
Openness to experience
Observing – seeing things in unusual ways
Curiosity
Accepting and reconciling apparent opposites
Tolerance of Ambiguity

3. Characteristics of Creative Individuals, continued
Independence in judgment, thought and action
Needing and assuming autonomy
Self-reliance
Not being subject to group to group standards and control
Willingness to take calculated risks
Persistence
Sensitivity to problems
Fluency – ability to generate a large number of ideas
Flexibility
Originality
Responsiveness to feeling
Openness to unconscious phenomena
Motivation
Freedom from fear of failure
Ability to concentrate
Thinking in images
Selectivity
Six Ways to Kill Creativity
Evaluation
Surveillance
Rewards
Competition
Restricted Choices
Extrinsic Orientation
Encourage Creativity
Training and Education (i.e. preparation, formulating a problem)
Encourage intrinsic motivation
Allow for possibility of failure because creative effort is greatest when the probability of
success or failure are equal, i.e. 50/50
Organic structure (as cf. mechanistic structure)
Open communication
Autonomy and feedback
Flexibility
Reduce pressure of rules and regulations
Choices