Stimulating creativity. Matching person and context

The core focus in this dissertation was on how to optimally match person and context to ensure that people perceive the creativity in novel ideas, and to stimulate optimal creative performance and task enjoyment. We expected and found that different people thrive in different contexts. First, we found that the perception of creativity seems to imply some sort of valuation of the idea, and is affected by the perception of novelty, feasibility, positive surprise, and disruptiveness. Perceptions of creativity were constituted similarly for laypeople and experts, and affected the expectations of success of novel ideas, willingness to endorse their implementation, and their perceived added value for further idea generation. Next, we tested if and how well people were actually able to use novel ideas as a starting point for further idea generation, and expected and found that this differed per person (in this case, affected by people's psychological needs for structure and autonomy). Where some people could perform well when receiving novel ideas, other could brainstorm better when receiving more everyday ideas.Last, different people (approach- or avoidance-motivated people) either generate ideas from many different versus one perspective when brainstorming, and we investigated whether receiving diverse or non-diverse input is optimal for their performance. Our findings indicate that people adapt their brainstorming style to the input, and that doing so increases their idea generation. Given that group brainstorming remains highly popular in modern organizations, we hope that implementing these findings increases creative idea generation.

PhD ceremony September 9, 2019