Individual Creativity in the Workplace

States

Individual Creativity in the Workplace: An Introduction

Roni Reiter-Palmon *; Victoria Kennel †; James C. Kaufman ‡ ⁎ University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, NE, United States

† University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, United States

‡ University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, United States

For the past two decades, interest in creativity and innovation in organizations has increased dramatically (Cummings & Oldham, 1997; Ford, 1996; Woodman, Sawyer, & Griffin, 1993). Changes in technology, globalization, and increased competition have all created an environment in which creativity and innovation are needed to cope with situational demands, economic pressures, and frequent changes (Mumford, Scott, Gaddis, & Strange, 2002; Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham, 2004; West, Hirst, Richter, & Shipton, 2004; Woodman et al., 1993). Whereas early research in organizational creativity has focused on occupations such as scientists and Research and Development (R & D), current thinking is that employees can exhibit creativity in almost any job or occupation (Mumford, Whetzel, & Reiter-Palmon, 1997). Therefore, scholars have sought to identify those factors that facilitate or inhibit creativity in a variety of organizational settings in an effort to improve organizational creativity (Reiter-Palmon, Mitchell, and Royston, in press). A recent survey by IBM (2010) indicated that addressing rapid changes and uncertainty is viewed as commonplace for managers; therefore one of the most important skills for managers is that of creative thinking. Consequently, it is not surprising that organizational researchers have increasingly been interested in understanding the antecedents of creativity in organizations and, more specifically, studying individual creativity in the workplace.

The purpose of the book is to provide a deeper understanding of the various factors that may influence individual creativity in the workplace and how individuals can exhibit creativity in the workplace. Understanding how individual creativity is fostered or inhibited in the workplace is critical to our ability to improve organizational creativity overall. Analyzing how individual creativity is part of the larger, multilevel context, of the team and wider organization is critical. Organizational creativity does not occur in a vacuum; it is not enough to study creativity at the individual, team, leader, or organizational level; the way that these different levels of creativity interact and intersect is equally important (Agars, Kaufman, Deane, & Smith, 2012).

The first section, Creativity and Innovation: Larger Concepts, includes four chapters focusing on broader issues of creativity and innovation, linking the individual to the organization. Rietzschel and Ritter’s chapter, Moving from Creativity to Innovation, addresses the evaluation and selection of creative ideas. Idea evaluation and selection activities occur after the generation of ideas but before their implementation and are an important but underemphasized element of creative problem solving. This chapter offers an overview of current research on the creative evaluation and selection process and its outcomes. Rietzschel and Ritter describe several individual and contextual factors that affect the evaluation of creative ideas, such as expertise, personality characteristics, and evaluation instructions. Variables that affect idea selection performance include selection criteria, preferences for feasible (rather than original) ideas, and unconscious thought processes. They explore factors that affect the likelihood of creative idea implementation in organizations, such as the ability to pitch and sell ideas, as well as being able to garner acceptance of and support for new ideas from coworkers and supervisors. Finally, they conclude the chapter with practical recommendations to support the successful evaluation and selection of creative ideas by individuals in organizations. Idea selection outcomes may be improved through loosening implicit constraints about usefulness and originality, using instructions for idea evaluation and selection that encourage choosing creative ideas, inducing specific psychological conditions that may have a positive influence on creative idea evaluation and selection, and training employees in idea evaluation and selection skills. The successful selling of a highly creative idea may be improved through stressing feasibility and effectiveness, preparing for resistance to the idea, showing confidence and enthusiasm for the idea, focusing on the long-term implications of the idea, and engaging commitment from multiple stakeholders.

The next paper in this section, by Cropley and Oppert, continues the theme of creativity and its relation to innovation. In the chapter The Fuzzy Front-End? How Creativity Drives Organizational Innovation, the authors propose that creativity serves as a fuzzy front-end to the innovation process. They argue that change serves as the key driver of innovation because change necessitates the generation of new solutions. Organizations engage in innovation when they capitalize on such change through incrementation and disruption. Cropley and Oppert illustrate various models and stages of the innovation process and portray creativity as a well-defined, understood, and manageable essential front-end of innovation. They conclude by presenting their Innovation Phase Model, which explains how key elements of creativity serve as drivers of innovation.

Cromwell, Amabile, and Harvey suggest in their chapter An Integrated Model of Dynamic Problem Solving Within Organizational Constraints that creativity can occur using two different pathways. One, the more typical pathway studied, is a problem-focused approach, where ideas are generated in response to a problem. However, an alternative exists in which ideas are developed and then the search begins for the problem the ideas can solve. Cromwell et al. suggest that the contradiction between these two approaches can be resolved by evaluating the role that constraints play in the creative process. Specifically, they suggest that the level and type of constraint that people face at different times during the creative process differentiates between the problem-first and the idea-first models. Cromwell et al. provide a review of these two different models and develop a typology of constraints based on two dimensions: type of constraints (resource or problem constraints) and source of constraints (internal or external). Using this typology as well as the two models, Cromwell et al. develop a model to synthesize these elements—the dynamic problem solving process model.

The final chapter in this section, Conceptualization of Emergent Constructs in a Multi-level Approach to Understanding Individual Creativity in Organizations by Lee, Chang, and Moon, provides a multilevel perspective on creativity in organizations. Much of the study of organizational creativity has focused on how creativity can flow from the bottom up, from individual creativity to team and organizational creativity. Yet there is some research focused on how creativity can flow from the top down, that is, from emergent and general properties at the organization and team level to the individual. However, to truly understand creativity in organizations from a multilevel perspective, both frameworks need to be employed simultaneously. This chapter provides researchers interested in such an approach a typology of categories of emergence to facilitate the conceptualization and measurement of such multilevel phenomena.

The second section in the book focuses on Intelligence and Cognition and includes three chapters. In their chapter, Interruptions and Multitasking: Advantages and Disadvantages for Creativity at Work, Mochi and Madjar theorize and review evidence regarding how different types of interruptions and multitasking may influence creativity. They describe five types of interruptions: intrusions, breaks, distractions, information technology, and multitasking and task switching. They propose that these types of interruptions influence the creative process and its outcomes through both cognitive and affective mechanisms via the provision or depletion of cognitive resources and through their effect on positive and negative affect. Mochi and Madjar further suggest various conditions that may influence these effects, such as the timing and frequency of interruptions, personal discretion to initiate interruptions, the nature of the intervening activity or break as it relates to creative activity, and individual preferences for involvement in any number of tasks. Mochi and Madjar conclude with recommendations for future research and practical tips for organizations regarding how interruptions may enhance and hinder creative performance.

The next chapter is The Skills Needed to Think Creatively: Within-Process and Cross-Process Skills, by Mumford, Todd, Higgs and Elliot. It focuses on the cognitive processes necessary to think creatively. Mumford et al. conceptualize creativity in the context of problem solving. The chapter provides a review examining the processes people must execute to produce creative problem solutions. Processes such as problem construction and identification, conceptual combination, and idea evaluation are reviewed. Next, the authors examine the strategies used in process execution that contribute to creative performance, focusing on the question of what skills must people possess to execute each of these processes? Mumford et al. discuss both process specific skills as well as cross-process skills. Cross-process skills are those skills that generalize across multiple processes. Five cross-process skills were identified by Mumford et al.: (1) causal analysis, (2) forecasting, (3) error analysis, (4) applications analysis, and (5) wisdom. Mumford et al. conclude by discussing some ways in which the study of these cross-process skills can contribute to our understanding of creativity such as providing new ways of measuring creative potential.

The third and final chapter in this section takes a different direction. Here, the authors Bogilović and Cerne evaluate the field of creativity research. Their chapter, The Intellectual Structure and Outlooks for Individual Creativity Research: A Document Cocitation Analysis 1950–2015, provides a detailed and nuanced look into the growth and development of the field of creativity research. Using bibliometric analysis based on cocitation and bibliographic coupling techniques, Bogilović and Cerne provide a discussion of the key articles and authors, and how constructs and theory have evolved over time. Their chapter suggests a growing interest in the field of individual creativity, indicated by a significant growth of publications over time. Their analysis suggests that early research (up to 1970) focused on a number of topics: (1) creative processes and intelligence, (2) creative talent and talent development, (3) measurement of creativity, and (4) brainstorming. The next time period (1971–85) shows the following topics (1) creative problem solving, (2) individual differences related to creativity including personality and intelligence, and (3) stimulating and measuring creativity. From 1986 to 2000, the interest and publications on creative problem solving and intelligence continued and remained very strong, as well as work on personality and creativity. New research topics emerge focusing on creativity in the workplace and the social psychology of creativity. From 2001 to 2010, we see a continuation of publications on individual differences, personality, and creative problem solving, and a stronger and more detailed set of publications on creativity in the workplace. Finally, since 2011 we see the additional emergence of team creativity, leadership and leading for creativity, and more attention to methodology and measurement. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research based on this bibliographic analysis.

The third section in the book focuses on Motivational, Affect and Preferences aspects of individuals that relate to creativity and includes four chapters. Reiter-Palmon and Kaufman’s chapter, Creative Styles in the Workplace: New vs. Different, explores the theoretical development and application of creative styles in the workplace. They synthesize existing theory and research to propose a model of New and Different creative styles that indicate how people choose to be creative. The foundational elements of the New and Different model derive from key distinguishing features of divergent and convergent thinking, radical and incremental creative contributions, and opportunities and constraints. Individuals with the New creative style are more likely to focus on radically novel ideas, seek a larger variety of ideas, and perceive potential constraints as opportunities; whereas, those with a Different creative style may desire to adapt and improve existing concepts, seek optimal ideas, and work to operate within constraints. Reiter-Palmon and Kaufman propose that both styles play a role in organizational creativity among individuals and teams: The New style benefits idea development, and the Different style identifies and addresses obstacles to idea development and implementation. They introduce a new creativity assessment, the Creative Response Evaluation at Work (CRE-W), used to evaluate the New and Different creative styles. Finally, they describe the CRE-W’s potential to support organizational initiatives to improve creativity through team composition, training, coaching, and development.

The section continues with a chapter by Rietzschel, Freedom, Structure, and Creativity, which address the tension between freedom and autonomy versus constraints and structure. Rietzschel argues that creativity is typically viewed as requiring freedom and that constraints and structure have a negative effect on creativity. In this chapter, Rietzschel suggests that this point of view is limited and ignore the creative potential of structure and constraints. Rietaschel reviews the literature on autonomy, freedom, and creativity, and explores the role that individual differences may play in the effect that freedom has on creativity. He suggests that freedom, although important for motivation and creativity, also implies complexity and cognitive load, and that this may diminish creative performance. As a result, constraints and structure at times have benefits for creativity depending on the situation and the individual. The chapter continues with a review of theory and empirical findings on individual difference variables that allow for creativity when constraints and structure are present. The chapter concludes with a discussion about the optimal balance between freedom and structure, with recommendations to organizations.

McKay, Lovelace, and Howard’s chapter, The Heart of Innovation: Antecedents and Consequences of Creative Self-Efficacy in Organizations, offers a current review of the literature on creative self-efficacy in organizational settings. They review the existing theoretical background and conceptualization of creative self-efficacy, and discuss the results of previously published and new meta-analytic reviews on the construct. They describe several antecedents of creative self-efficacy including personal (job self-efficacy, job knowledge, and personality), contextual (leadership, job complexity, job autonomy, and job requirements), and social sources (social network characteristics), and report that job type and culture may moderate these relationships. McKay and colleagues explore creativity as the key outcome of studies on creative self-efficacy and suggest that culture, job type, and methodological factors (e.g., self- vs. other-report, cross-sectional vs. time-lagged design, measure type, and type of creativity) may moderate this relationship. They describe various measures of creative self-efficacy and conclude with directions for future research.

The section concludes with a chapter by Madrid andPatterson, Affect and Creativity. The authors conclude from a review of relevant literature that studies on creativity applied in organizational environments indicate that positive affect is a positive predictor of creativity, while the relationship between negative affect and creativity is less clear. Madrid and Peterson further discuss a number of theoretical approaches that have been used to address these findings such as the dual tuning and the affective shift process theories. However, they suggest that it is important to move beyond positive and negative affect. Therefore, accounting for both affective valence and activation offers the opportunity to study how a more diverse array of feelings might, or might not, be directly relevant to understanding creativity. In order to more fully address the role of affect in creativity, Madrid and Peterson adopt an affective valence and activation approach, specifically the Theory of Core Affect, to discuss and delineate a finer-grained understanding to the affective experience and creativity.

The final section focuses on individual creativity within the context of teams and leadership and includes five chapters. Hunter, Allen, Heinen, and Cushenbery’s chapter, Proposing a Multiple Pathway Approach to Leading Innovation: Single and Dual Leader Approaches, suggests two general approaches to leading for innovation. They describe how the complexities of innovation create role conflict for those charged with leading innovation, and describe how such conflict directly and indirectly affects innovation outcomes. Under this lens, they propose a multiple pathway approach to leading for innovation. The first pathway employs a single leader capable of ambidexterity to engage in the wide variety of behaviors associated with successful innovation. The second utilizes a dual‑leadership approach where two leaders engage in shared leadership to manage the responsibilities of leading innovation. Hunter and colleagues present the advantages and challenges of each leadership pathway and offer three key considerations to determine the appropriate approach, including rapid decision-making demands, clarity of leadership roles, and the diversity of innovation demands inherent in the organization.

Christensen, Hartmann, and Rasmussen’s chapter, Creative Leaders in Bureaucratic Organizations: Are Leaders More Innovative at Higher Levels of the Organizational Hierarchy?, explores the associations between innovativeness and intelligence of leaders and their respective level of leadership in the organizational hierarchy. They tested these relationships in a sample of leaders from a large international corporation. Their results indicated that personal intelligence and innovativeness both independently predicted the leader’s level of leadership in the organization. Trends in their results indicated that the relationship of intelligence and innovativeness with leadership level became stronger as leaders demonstrated greater tenure with the organization. Christensen and colleagues conclude with recommendations to help bureaucratic organizations engage in creative efforts.

Coursey, Paulus, Williams, and Kenworthy review the extensive literature on team creativity in their chapter The Role of Individual Differences in Group and Team Creativity. Although there is a tremendous amount of research on factors that facilitate and inhibit team creativity, Coursey et al. note that the research on individual differences and their effect on team creativity is more limited. The chapter reviews the literature on the factors that influence the role of individual differences on team creativity. Coursey et al. discuss the role of various factors that impede or facilitate individual contribution to team creativity and argue that when these factors are not present individual differences may have a stronger effect. The role of group composition and individual difference such as personality variables, motivation, and cognitive orientation, and their effect on overall creativity and the creative processes, is also considered in this chapter. Coursey et al. note that different individual differences may come into play and be more important for groups and teams engaging divergent vs. convergent aspects of creative problem solving. The chapter concludes with a proposed model to predict the effects of group composition on creativity.

Wigert, in his chapter on Managing creativity in organizations, addresses the issue of how organizations can manage creativity and innovation. His chapter provides a summary of data collected from a representative sample of employees in the United States regarding how employees are experiencing these key elements of the creative process in relation to best practices for driving creativity. The chapter then proceeds to cover cultivating the creativity of individual employees through improved management strategies and organizational performance strategies.

The final chapter in this section, by Ruark, Blacksmith, and Wallace, The role of creative Capacity in the 21st Century Army, focuses on a specific instance of creativity, in an area that seems somewhat less conducive to creativity—the military. Ruark and his colleagues discuss the role that creativity has in the military in the 21st century. Specifically, they suggest that although the hierarchical structure and focus on structured processes may be viewed as an antithetical to the Army, that is not the case. Rather, successful military operations require creativity. However, soldiers must balance the need for creative thinking and compliance with processes and procedure. In this chapter, they provide a discussion of the individual difference characteristics that the Army values that are central to creativity. Ruark et al. further acknowledge the difficulty inherent in enacting creativity in an organization that thrives on rules and doctrine and discuss way in which the Army can balance these through selection and developing creative soldiers.

Creativity and innovation are complex, multifaceted constructs. We hope that this book helps the streams of research seem more manageable. The relevant literature reviews will help readers catch up on areas in which they may be less familiar. The theories and models will help sort and organize complicated and nuanced concepts. The frequent connections to real-world situations will highlight how theory and studies can be applied in organizations. Finally, the suggestions and tips will offer specific ways that both scholars and organizational leaders can team up to direct the way toward the best possible future.

References

Agars M.D., Kaufman J.C., Deane A., Smith B. Fostering individual creativity through organizational context: a review of recent research and recommendations for organizational leaders. In: Mumford M.D., ed. Handbook of organizational creativity. New York: Elsevier; 2012:271–294.

Cummings A., Oldham G.R. Enhancing creativity: managing work contexts for the high potential employee. California Management Review. 1997;40:22–38.

Ford C.M. A theory of individual creative action in multiple social domains. Academy of Management Review. (4):1996;1112–1142.

IBM. (2010). IBM 2010 Global CEO Study: Creativity selected as most crucial factor for future success [press release]. Retrieved from https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/31670.wss.

Mumford M.D., Scott G.M., Gaddis B., Strange J.M. Leading creative people: orchestrating expertise and relationships. The Leadership Quarterly. 2002;13:705–750. doi:10.1016/S1048-9843(02)00158-3.

Mumford M.D., Whetzel D.L., Reiter-Palmon R. Thinking creatively at work: organization influences on creative problem solving. Journal of Creative Behaviour. 1997;31:7–17.

Reiter-Palmon, R., Mitchell, K. S., & Royston, R. P. (in press). Improving creativity in organizational settings: applying research on creativity to organizations. To appear in J. C. Kaufman & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), Cambridge Handbook of creativity.

Shalley C.E., Zhou J., Oldham G.R. The effects of personal and contextual characteristics on creativity: where should we go from here?. Journal of Management. 2004;30(2):933–958. doi:10.1016/j.jm.2004.06.007.

West M.A., Hirst G., Richter A., Shipton H. Twelve steps to heaven: successfully managing change through developing innovative teams. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology. 2004;13(2):269–299. doi:10.1080/13594320444000092.

Woodman R., Sawyer J., Griffin R. Toward a theory of organizational creativity. The Academy of Management Review. 1993;18(2):293–321. doi:10.2307/258761.

Section 1

Creativity and Innovation: Larger Concepts

Chapter 1

Moving From Creativity to Innovation

Eric F. Rietzschel⁎; Simone M. Ritter†    ⁎ Department of Psychology, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands

† Radboud University Nijmegen, Behavioural Science Institute, Nijmegen, Netherlands

Abstract

The generation of creative ideas and insights is commonly thought to be an important precondition for innovation. However, the relation between these constructs is far from straightforward. In this chapter, we present an overview of research on the evaluation and selection of creative ideas. In doing so, we show that both the evaluation and (especially) the selection of creative ideas can be quite problematic, depending on several individual and contextual factors. Having summarized the literature, we use these findings and insights to give some practical recommendations for successfully moving from creativity to innovation.

Keywords

Creativity; Innovation; Idea selection; Idea evaluation; Idea implementation

Creativity is one of our most important abilities, having led to humans exploring and colonizing the entire planet (as well as parts of extraterrestrial space), the invention of agriculture, medicine, and astounding levels of technological advances, not to mention science, philosophy, and art—it is no exaggeration to state that the world would look completely differently (for better or for worse) without human creativity. However, creativity’s potential to change the world relies on something that has traditionally been overlooked in the field of creativity research: the ability to get creative ideas implemented and adopted. This requires more than idea generation: creative ideas need to be recognized and selected, resources need to be harvested, and relevant stakeholders need to be convinced of the value of a creative idea before implementation can successfully take place. In this chapter, we summarize much of the literature on the evaluation and selection of creative ideas, discuss what we think are some of the main challenges in moving from creativity to innovation and, finally, provide practical advice for successful idea evaluation and selection and for selling a highly creative idea.

Defining Creativity and Innovation

Creativity is commonly defined as the ability to generate ideas, solutions, or products that are both novel and appropriate (e.g., Amabile, 1996; Sternberg & Lubart, 1999; also see Litchfield, Gilson, & Gilson, 2015, for a discussion of different quality dimensions of creative ideas). Thus ideas that are merely good solutions to a problem without any element of novelty or surprise would be considered mundane, and ideas that are only novel without being somehow feasible or appropriate in a given domain would be considered eccentric or weird, but neither would be considered creative contributions. Note, however, that mundane ideas are not necessarily worthless: Often the most important thing, especially in organizations, is that an idea works. However, there are many situations in which organizations are specifically looking for novel ideas, for example, when conventional solutions are known to be ineffective, or when searching for a way to gain a competitive advantage through innovation.

The relation between creativity and innovation is best described by stating that creativity is a necessary, yet insufficient condition for innovation (e.g., Baer, 2012; Rietzschel, Nijstad, & Stroebe, 2006; West, 2002a, 2002b). While the common definition of creativity revolves around idea generation, innovation is usually defined as the intentional introduction and application within a job, work team or organization of ideas, processes, products or procedures which are new to that job, work team or organization and which are designed to benefit the job, the work team or the organization (West & Farr, 1990, p. 9). Thus innovation centers around the implementation of creative ideas in an organizational context.

The Importance of Distinguishing Creativity From Innovation

The difference between creativity and innovation is important for several reasons. Firstly, the terms creativity and innovation describe different behaviors, and as such should also be distinguished conceptually. In fact, the two are not always strongly or even positively related, nor are they necessarily predicted by the same (dispositional or contextual) variables (e.g., Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Perry-Smith & Coff, 2011; Somech & Drach-Zahavy, 2013; West, 2002a, 2002b). Thus, factors that contribute to idea generation may not lead to better idea implementation, and sometimes the factors that enhance the one seem to actually hinder the other. This has serious implications for organizations interested in increasing their innovative output. Distinguishing between creativity and innovation is, therefore, important from both a theoretical and a practical perspective.

Secondly, we currently know far more about idea generation than about idea implementation. Although a substantial amount of research has looked at innovation in organizations, this research has rarely explicitly distinguished between idea generation and idea implementation (but see, e.g., Baer, 2012; Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Somech & Drach-Zahavy, 2013, for exceptions)—the two are often measured together in a global assessment of innovative job performance. In contrast, there is a large body of literature that has looked specifically at creativity (see, e.g., Zhou & Shalley, 2008, for overviews of organizational creativity research), addressing issues such as individual differences, group interaction, contextual influences, and so on. The consequence is that we know quite a lot about the factors that contribute to successful idea generation, but—given the lack of research on idea implementation and the weak and complicated relation between idea generation and implementation—relatively little about the factors that contribute to idea implementation specifically.

Thirdly, innovation research suggests that it is precisely in the transition from idea generation to implementation that individuals and groups run into difficulties: getting to successful implementation simply seems to be the bigger challenge. As West (2002a, 2002b) famously stated, ideas are ten a penny (p. 411): There usually is no shortage of creative ideas, but rather a lack of willingness, support, or the necessary resources (either tangible or intangible) to get these ideas implemented. Thus, research on the conditions for a successful transition from creativity to idea implementation is sorely needed.

Moving From Creativity to Innovation in the Organizational Context

Several scholars have addressed the creative or innovative process as a series of stages, although in reality the process is more likely to be iterative. An influential example is the model by Mumford, Lonergan, and Scott (2002), who proposed a process where (a) ideas are generated, and (b) possible outcomes and implications are forecasted, after which (c) the viability of the idea within the intended implementation context is assessed. This can then lead to (d) a decision to either drop the idea altogether, or begin planning for implementation, or—more likely—move into a revision process, after which the idea gets implemented or might still be dropped. What this and similar models suggest is that idea implementation is difficult because ideas encounter multiple challenges along the way, such as evaluation (creative ideas need to be recognized), selection (only a limited number of ideas can be chosen for further development), selling or promotion (other stakeholders need to be convinced of the value of an idea), and further revision and implementation.

Organizational creativity and innovation is a multilevel phenomenon influenced by many stakeholders (e.g., Woodman, Sawyer, & Griffin, 1993). Idea generation can happen in many ways, such as during brainstorming sessions (e.g., Osborn, 1953; Sutton & Hargadon, 1996), suggestions entered into an internal suggestions system (e.g., Frese, Teng, & Wijnen, 1999; Verworn, 2009), or ideas generated and pursued as part of one’s regular work duties (e.g., Shalley, Gilson, & Blum, 2000). Similarly, the screening, selection, and further development of ideas can happen in a variety of ways and settings, such as workgroup meetings (where workgroup members collectively decide which ideas or options to pursue) or board meetings (where the management may decide on the allocation of funds), but also individually, when employees or supervisors decide on their own which ideas or options seem most promising. Regardless of how ideas are generated and selected, however, organizational reality requires the involvement of other stakeholders at some point; apart from small, self-owned businesses, employees are rarely if ever in the position to generate, select, and implement creative ideas at work themselves (apart from those ideas that only concern people’s own work processes, such as adopting a new way of organizing one’s own work tasks). Thus, although innovation requires that the person who came up with an idea sees the value of her idea and is able to select it as a promising option to develop and implement, this is by no means enough: even if individual creators would score perfectly on recognizing and selecting their most creative ideas (which, as we will see, they do not), this would be no guarantee for the idea to get implemented. The other stakeholders within the organization will need to be convinced that the idea is worthwhile (also see Litchfield, Ford, & Gentry, 2015). Thus, key to our analysis is the proposition that moving from creativity to innovation requires looking beyond individual creative abilities or behavior.

In the following, we first summarize and discuss much of the literature in the area of idea evaluation (including creative forecasting) and idea selection. Then, we focus on the question of whether there are other factors that can aid or hinder the transition from idea selection to idea implementation. Finally, we reflect on the research discussed thus far to provide some practical suggestions for successfully selling a highly creative idea.

Idea Evaluation and Creative Forecasting

The first challenge in moving from creativity to innovation is to recognize whether the available ideas have creative potential. Thus, once ideas have been generated, the next step involves idea evaluation—the assessment of the available options against certain standards (e.g., originality, usefulness, popularity, potential, impact, risk and cost; e.g., Frederiksen & Knudsen, 2017).

Most creativity theories recognize idea evaluation as an important component of the creative process. For example, an evaluation operation was included in Guilford’s (1968) structure of intellect and in Vygotsky’s theory of imagination (Ayman-Nolley, 1992; Smolucha, 1992), and Amabile’s (1996) Componential Theory of creativity includes response validation as a part of the creative process. Moreover, it has been suggested that creative ideas only earn social acceptance after they were critically scrutinized (Simonton, 1988), and that evaluation and criticism are important aspects of imaginative invention (Csikszentmihalyi, 1999).

Several researchers have stated that idea evaluation begins with forecasting—the prediction of likely outcomes or the consequences of implementing an idea within a particular setting. People’s evaluations of an idea will therefore strongly depend on their expectations regarding the success of an idea (Besemer & O’Quin, 1999; Christiaans, 2002; Dörner & Schaub, 1994; Lonergan, Scott, & Mumford, 2004; Mumford et al., 2002). Forecasts can be subject to several kinds of errors (Pant & Starbuck, 1990). For example, people may tend to underestimate the resources that would be needed, and to overestimate the outcomes, especially positively valued outcomes (Schwenk & Thomas, 1983). The latter, also called optimistic bias, appears to arise from different sources, such as the failure to consider base rate information, and a predisposition to discount obstacles (Buehler, Griffin, & Ross, 1994; Francis-Smythe & Robertson, 1999; Mumford, Schultz, & Van Doorn, 2001; Schwenk & Thomas, 1983).

Only a limited number of studies have so far investigated how idea evaluation and forecasting operate (although idea evaluation appears to have been studied more extensively than idea selection). In the following section, we review the available literature on idea evaluation and forecasting to shed light on the question whether and when people can accurately evaluate and forecast ideas.

One important question is whether the creativity of an idea can be objectively assessed (i.e., whether some ideas are actually more creative than others). If not, this might be taken to mean that the creativity or quality of an idea is merely in the eye of the beholder and that no judgment of any idea is better than another. Most creativity researchers take the perspective that, although all creativity ratings or judgments are inherently subjective, this does not mean that all judgments are equally valid (also see Silvia, 2008). For example, the operational definition of creativity underlying Amabile’s (1982, 1996) Consensual Assessment Technique is that A product or response is creative to the extent that appropriate observers independently agree it is creative. Appropriate observers are those familiar with the domain in which the product was created or the response articulated (Amabile, 1996, p. 33). In fact, ratings of creativity provided by experts or trained raters show good interrater reliability for different kinds of creative ideas and products, including drawings (e.g., Dollinger & Shafran, 2005), stories (e.g., Baer, Kaufman, & Gentile, 2004), and ideas in divergent thinking tasks (e.g., Amabile, 1982; Diehl & Stroebe, 1987; Rietzschel et al., 2006; Ritter, van Baaren, & Dijksterhuis, 2012; Silvia, 2008). The agreement between judges indicates that creativity is generally an identifiable and quantifiable characteristic of ideas and products (Benedek et al., 2016).

Interestingly, earlier research on idea evaluation has shown a moderate association (36% shared variance) between people’s evaluation of their own ideas (i.e., intrapersonal evaluation) and their evaluation of others’ ideas (i.e., interpersonal evaluation; Runco & Smith, 1992). In other words, people’s evaluation of ideas strongly depends on the source of the ideas. This may possibly be explained by one’s role in the evaluation process: One can either be actor (during intrapersonal evaluation) or observer (during interpersonal evaluation) (also see Berg, 2016). Both roles may have advantages and disadvantages for the evaluation process. For example, having generated an idea may provide relevant information regarding idea development, but may also lead to biased perceptions due to feelings of loss when having to let go of the idea; this is also sometimes called the ownership bias (e.g., Kahneman, Knetsch, & Thaler, 1991; Onarheim & Christensen, 2012). Directly addressing these different roles and their effect on idea evaluation, Berg (2016) studied the conditions for accurate creative forecasting in a field study and a lab experiment. In the field study, creators (i.e., professionals in the circus arts industry) and managers forecasted the success of new circus acts with audiences. Forecasting accuracy was assessed using data from > 10,000 audience members, and revealed that both managers and creators underestimated the success of new acts. However, creators were more accurate than managers in forecasting the success of other people’s ideas (but not their own).

As evaluating one’s own ideas clearly differs from evaluating others’ ideas, we discuss research on these two activities separately.

Interpersonal Evaluation

In an extensive research program, Runco and colleagues (Basadur, Runco, & Vega, 2000; Runco, 1993; Runco & Basadur, 1993; Runco & Chand, 1994, 1995; Runco, McCarthy, & Svenson, 1994; Runco & Smith, 1992; Runco & Vega, 1990) have established that, as mentioned previously, people are generally able to accurately evaluate others’ ideas (i.e., their evaluations tend to be substantially positively correlated with those of experts). Nevertheless, there is room for improvement. Recently, for example, Benedek et al. (2016) found that people tended to underestimate the creativity of ideas. Specifically, although people recognized the novelty of highly creative ideas, they tended to underestimate the appropriateness of these ideas. Moreover, results showed a positive relationship between participants’ divergent thinking skills and their interpersonal evaluation skill: participants who were better at generating creative ideas were also better at recognizing other people’s creative ideas. Dailey and Mumford (2006) and Runco and Vega (1990) found similar positive relationships between interpersonal evaluation and idea generation skills, suggesting a common ability or trait underlying both behaviors.

Expertise

In addition to the roles that different evaluators may have (cf. Berg, 2016), they may also differ in their expertise regarding the ideas being judged, and such differences in expertise could influence idea evaluation. For example, Kaufman, Baer, Cole, and Sexton (2008) asked experts (published poets) and novices (college students) to evaluate poems on their creativity. The results revealed moderate correlations between the evaluations of experts and novices, with experts evaluating the poems as less creative than novices. Moreover, experts showed a much higher interrater agreement than novices. In line with these results, Onarheim and Christensen (2012) found that more experienced engineers agreed more strongly with executives in the evaluation of engineering design ideas. Furthermore, although employee evaluations were likely to be biased by the visual complexity of the ideas, this bias was less strong among experienced employees. Further, Dailey and Mumford (2006) investigated the accuracy of undergraduate students in predicting the resources needed for, and consequences of, implementation of creative ideas. Although participants on the whole underestimated resource requirements, and overestimated outcomes, participants with high domain knowledge were more accurate in forecasting some important aspects, such as the likely impact of an idea on organizations, the difficulties involved in idea implementation, and the novelty of the idea. In line with these findings, Önkal, Yates, Simga-Mugan, and Öztin (2003) found that as people acquire experience, forecasts become more