Michael D. Mumford’s research while affiliated with University of Oklahoma and other places

Creative ideas, and the innovations which flow from them, transform many aspects of our lives. Although we typically think of innovation as an aspect of technology or the arts, innovation also occurs in our social lives. In the present effort, we examine the nature and significance of various social innovations as representations of transformational creativity. Subsequently, we examine the empirical evidence bearing on the key skills needed for social innovation. We find evidence for a number of skills, including problem definition, causal analysis, forecasting, constraint analysis, planning, and wisdom. The implications of these observations for the development of people’s capacity for social innovation and transformational creativity are discussed.

Innovation, and the creative thinking that provides the basis for innovation, is of great value for organizations. In this article we describe what is needed for people to think creatively, noting that creative thinking is a complex, albeit voluntary, activity involving performance on certain types of problems. The ways leaders influence peoples’ willingness to engage in, and ability to solve, creative problems are then described. Leaders of creative efforts must not only motivate creative work but also actively contribute to creative problem-solving both by engaging followers in creative problem-solving and by establishing the conditions that allow creative problem-solving at the individual, team, and firm levels. The implications of these observations for leader assessment and leader development are discussed. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, Volume 10 is January 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Over the course of the last thirty years, we have made substantial progress in our understanding of creative problem-solving and creative performance. As is always the case, however, progress in our research raises as many new questions as answers. In the present effort, we examine key findings that have emerged in key areas of creativity research including abilities, creative problem-solving processes, creative thinking skills, personality, social interactions, work climate, and environmental context. In each area we examine new questions arising from prior research. Directions for future research on creative performance are also discussed.

The relationship between size and performance of collaborative human small groups has been studied broadly across management, psychology, economics, sociology, and engineering disciplines. However, empirical research findings on this question remain equivocal. Many of the earlier studies centered on empirical human-subject experiments, which inevitably involved many confounding factors. To obtain more theory-driven mechanistic explanations of the linkage between group size and performance, we developed an agent-based simulation model that describes the complex process of collaborative group decision-making on problem-solving tasks. To find better solutions to a problem with given complexity, these agents repeatedly explore and share solution candidates, evaluate and respond to the solutions proposed by others, and update their understanding of the problem by conducting individual local search and incorporating others’ proposals. Our results showed that under a condition of ineffective information sharing, group size was negatively related to group performance at the beginning of discussion across each level of problem complexity (i.e., low, medium, and high). However, in the long run, larger groups outperformed smaller groups for the problem with medium complexity and equally well for the problem with low complexity because larger groups developed higher solution diversity. For the problem with high complexity, the higher solution diversity led to more disagreements which in turn hindered larger groups’ collaborative problem-solving ability. Our results also suggested that, in small collaborative team settings, effective information sharing can significantly improve group performance for groups of any size, especially for larger groups. This model provides a unified, mechanistic explanation of the conflicting observations reported in the existing empirical literature.

Creativity, the generation of novel and useful ideas, and innovation, the transformation of these ideas into new products, processes, and services, are both critical for the long-term viability, profitability, and growth of organizations. Moreover, the complex, risky, and uncertain nature of innovative efforts demonstrates the importance of organizational leaders to effectively manage the innovative process. In this element, we discuss the role of leaders in effectively facilitating the creative problem-solving process that gives rise to innovative products, processes, and services. More specifically, we highlight the knowledge, skills, and behaviors needed to effectively lead across three integrated facets of this process-leading the people, leading the work, and leading the firm. This discussion promotes an understanding of how leaders manage those asked to engage in innovative efforts and, moreover, how leaders systematically integrate creative ideas within the organization to ensure the development and success of innovative products, processes, or services.

Idea evaluation has been identified as a critical step in the creative problem-solving process. Yet, it is unclear how exactly individuals evaluate and compensate for weaknesses in their creative ideas. In the present study, both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to identify the compensatory strategies that undergraduate participants applied during the creative idea evaluation process. Additionally, the impact of the application of these strategies and the impact of leader feedback was examined on the production of high quality, original, and elegant solutions to a creative problem. Eleven compensatory strategies were identified and subsequently categorized as effective or ineffective based on their impact on the creative solutions developed. It was found that effective strategies were those that focused on improving product value with respect to the customer, and ineffective strategies were those that focused on profit and marketing strategy. It was also found that negative leader feedback reduced the application of ineffective compensatory strategies, and leader feedback that applied both innovative and operative standards led to the production of more original creative problem solutions. The implications of these findings for improving performance on creative tasks are discussed.