Creativity

10 creative methods (name 3)

-Brainwriting: at various key points during a brainstorming session, group members will cease all talking and write down their own ideas silently (eliminates production blocking since people don't have to wait their turn and reduces conformity) -Nominal Group Technique: share ideas from brainwriting session, discuss and clarify them, and then each person rank-orders the ideas (can be done anonymously and Delphi technique - members never interact face-to-face) -Diversify the Team: people with different backgrounds, training, and perspectives are going to offer different categories of thought and ways of looking at a problem (creative problem solving and innovation)

convergent thinking

-is thinking that proceeds toward or converges on a single answer -Ex. taking a multiple choice test in which there is a single "correct" answer. The test-taker brings knowledge from outside of the problem (perhaps learned in a course) and converges it all onto the problem in order to choose the correct answer.

divergent thinking

-moves outwards from a problem in many directions and involves thinking without boundaries -Ex. taking an open-ended test that asks how many uses one can imagine for various (often mundane) objects. What can you do with a pencil? A string? A rock?

4 conceptual domains of new ideas

-teams should strive to achieve creative ideas (novel/original) vs conservative ideas -ideas can also fall between the realms of realistic→ unrealistic -basically you have 4 quadrants: 1. creative realism- this is the best one, it's realistic and creative 2. conservative realism - highly traditional and highly connected to current knowledge and practices 3. conservative idealism- this is the worst because ideas aren't connected to prior knowledge so they are unenforceable, and the ideas aren't original or new 4. creative idealism - highly original, but highly unrealistic

7 rules to create productive brainstorming climate

7 Rules: defer judgement, build on ideas of others, encourage wild ideas, stay focused on topic, one conversation at a time, be visual, go for quantity

production blocking (threat/barrier)

brainstorming group members cannot speak at the same time; have to wait to speak, people may forget their ideas; difficult for group members to listen

brainstorming

face-face brainstorming groups; leads to the generation of fewer ideas than comparable numbers of solitary brainstormers in both laboratory and organizational settings (nominal group)

nominal group technique

individuals think of their own ideas individually and then share them with the group; proves to work better than traditional brainstorming techniques

Flexibility

is a measure of how many different types of ideas a person generates

Fluency

is simply a measure of how many different ideas a person is able to generate

Originality

is the measure of the uniqueness or originality of the idea; Ex. statistically, original ideas are ideas that are generated by less than 5 percent of a given sample

treats/barriers to creativity in teams (4)

social loafing, conformity, production blocking, downward norm setting

conformity (threat/barrier)

the desire to be liked and accepted by others, particularly others in one's group; can occur when group members are worried about judgmentbrainstorming group members cannot speak at the same time; have to wait to speak, people may forget their ideas; difficult for group members to listen

downward norm setting (threat/barrier)

the performance of people working within a group tends to converge over time; there is a pervasive tendency for the lowest performers in a group to pull down the average; individuals working in brainstorming groups tend to match their performance to that of the least productive member

social loafing (threat/barrier)

the tendency for people in a group to slack off; when members perceive their own contributions to be unidentifiable and dispensable, they are likely to loaf