Todd Lubart’s talk on “Detecting and Developing Creativity in Organizations”

Todd Lubart did an interesting workshop on “Detecting and Developing Creativity in organizations” at the EAWOP in Münster. During the end he pointed to three areas where one can influence organizational creativity (citing three sources). He also stressed that different jobs bring different demands for creativity and that you cannot simply, e.g., paint the walls, and expect a positive change. The need for a specific diagnostic of the tasks and the person who must “fit” was very interesting.
In case anyone is interested, these are the areas and the factors from his talk. But as written, without knowing which of these factors influence which processes and where you (or the person who needs to be creative) need(s) support, they are not that useful to know — you need a good diagnostic first to change the right aspects of work.

Task Environment

  • Resources reasonably available
  • Time for thinking
  • Challenging and interesting work
  • Autonomy and Freedom
  • Risk taking supported
  • Intellectual stimulation — debate

Social Environment

  • Mission clarity — goals to be creative
  • Positive interpersonal relations, positive peer group, supervisor relations, trust, humor
  • Participation, exchange encouraged
  • Top management support, idea support
  • Reward/recognition/incentives for creativity
  • Organization well-integrated with internal and external sources

Physical Environment

  • Plants
  • Colors (calm/inspiring)
  • Privacy
  • Windows and view (on nature)
  • Light (quality, daylight, natural)
  • Air (temperature), sound, smell

Sources: Amabile (1988), Ekvall (1996), Ceylan & Dul (2007)
Cited from Todd Lubart’s Slides from the EAWOP2013

BTW, he also said that the social environment was more important than the others.

Very interesting and I’m looking forward to read more about his work.

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