August 2024
·
2 Reads
This page lists works of an author who doesn't have a ResearchGate profile or hasn't added the works to their profile yet. It is automatically generated from public (personal) data to further our legitimate goal of comprehensive and accurate scientific recordkeeping. If you are this author and want this page removed, please let us know.
August 2024
·
2 Reads
March 2024
·
20 Reads
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.
August 2023
·
14 Reads
July 2023
·
4 Reads
January 2023
·
18 Reads
November 2022
·
87 Reads
·
17 Citations
Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior
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.
November 2022
·
92 Reads
·
3 Citations
Journal of Creativity
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.
October 2022
·
212 Reads
·
4 Citations
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.
July 2022
·
29 Reads
·
1 Citation
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.
January 2022
·
65 Reads
·
1 Citation
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.
... The use of group facilitators to guide the process can be beneficial (Kramer et al., 2001;Oxley et al., 1996). Leaders can also play an important role in facilitating the various collective creative processes in the organization (Hunter & Cushenbery, 2011;Mumford et al., 2019;Reiter-Palmon & Illies, 2004; see also Chapters 2-7 in Volume 2). ...
May 2019
... According to Ederio et al. (2023), individuals who participate in the research voluntarily are not obligated to continue their involvement, alleviating any pressure. According to Mumford et al. (2021), the primary ethical concern when conducting research in institutional settings, such as educational institutions, the military, organizations, and prisons, is to guarantee that research participation is voluntary. Using coercive measures may not only create unwanted and unreasonable bodily and psychological risks, but it can also lead to incorrect data, which undermines the integrity of the research (Sigaud et al., 2009). ...
January 2021
... Although not every exemplar engaged in all practices, the set of practices that exemplars identified offers ideals for leadership and management practices in scientific teams. Importantly, this study yielded practices that generally align with previous consideration and initiating structure leadership frameworks (Bass & Bass, 2009;Yukl, 2008) and with the theoretical model of scientific leadership proposed by Mumford and his colleagues (Mumford, Martin, Elliott, & McIntosh, 2019;Robledo et al., 2012). This theoretical model maintains that scientific leadership comprises two facets: leading the people and leading the work. ...
April 2019
... General indicators used in various studies to measure creativity according to Silver (1997) are fluency, flexibility, originality. Developing creative thinking skills is essential to prepare students for the world they will live in in the future (Mumford & England, 2022) especially to face the increasing competition in life (Rudyanto et al., 2019). ...
November 2022
Journal of Creativity
... The isolation of expert work can also be a barrier to strategies for socially-referenced creativity, such as identifying new collaborators, and communicating their ideas to other experts, because the opportunities to actually accomplish these processes might be limited. In addition, because experts might find themselves in a position DEVELOPMENT OF CREATIVITY 14 where others depend on their decisions (e.g., in cases where an expert runs a laboratory, studio, or business), they might also feel pressure to take fewer risks than they did previously (Mumford et al., 2023). Because of this, some experts might prefer to follow the mainstream of their field, rather than working creatively, because they perceive it to be more in line with their social position of leadership in their organization. ...
November 2022
Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior
... Contextual factors include leader behaviors (e.g., feedback), perceptions of an idea's source, the nature of the evaluative standards applied, and other project constraints. To make matters more complex, these factors do not operate independently (Mumford, McIntosh, Mulhearn, Steele, & Watts, 2016). For example, Rodriguez, Cheban, Shah, and Watts (2020) showed that higher levels of the general factor of personality facilitated the evaluation of others' ideas while hindering the evaluation of one's own ideas. ...
January 2016
... Each agent operates independently, actively exploring the problem space from various angles, evaluating proposals from others, and suggesting modifications to the current group solution. In contrast to previously reported models and simulations [27][28][29][30][72][73][74][75][76], this model stands out by placing a specific emphasis on various search strategies and their performance in addressing diverse problems characterized by different complexity and error profiles. A detailed description of the components of the proposed agent-based model is given as follows. ...
October 2022
... For example, Mumford et al. (2017) highlighted nine cognitive skills as critical to leadership performance. Todd et al. (2021) demonstrated that goal analysis, constraint analysis, forecasting and idea evaluation are paramount to the development of leader judgment. Mumford et al. (2018) similarly argued that there are specific skills that people must possess to effectively solve creative problems and that these skills should be developed for positive creative outcomes. ...
October 2021
... Quantitative analyses have been conducted on moral intensity measures, which have failed to identify the six-factor orthogonal structure expected based on Jones' (1991) model. Alternative configurations have favoured a three-factor model (de Graaff et al., 2019;McMahon & Harvey, 2006), comprising seriousness of harm, probability of harm, and social consensus, or a two-factor model focusing on magnitude of consequences and social consensus (Fichtel et al., 2022). Research has highlighted the differential importance of the six dimensions of moral intensity as well, with social consensus and magnitude of consequences being most important, but less so temporal immediacy and proximity, for ethical decision making (Barnett, 2001). ...
April 2021
Ethics & Behavior
... Abundant academic research suggests creative processes in entrepreneurship and innovation benefit from structuring (e.g., Dyer et al., 2008;Mumford, Elliott, & Martin, 2020). Several techniques for structuring the creative entrepreneurial process have gained enormous attention among practitioners, for example, those of the design thinking method (Elsbach & Stigliani, 2018;Retna, 2016) and the lean start-up approach (Ries, 2011). ...
December 2020