Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study if the employees’ optimism-pessimism ratio predicts their creativity. Design/methodology/approach In total, 134 employees reported their optimism and pessimism, and the respective supervisors described the employees’ creativity. Findings The relationship between the optimism-pessimism ratio and creativity is curvilinear (inverted U-shaped); beyond a certain level of the optimism-pessimism ratio, the positive relationship between the ratio and creativity weakens, suggesting that the possible positive effects of (high) optimism may be weakened by a very low level of pessimism. Research limitations/implications Being cross-sectional, the study examines neither the causal links between the optimism-pessimism ratio and creativity nor other plausible causal links. The study was carried out at a single moment and did not capture the dynamics that occur over the course of time involving changes in optimism/pessimism and creativity. Future studies may adopt longitudinal or quasi-experimental designs. Practical implications Managers and organizations must consider that, even though positivity promotes creativity, some level of negativity may help positivity to produce creativity. Originality/value This study suggests that scholars who want to study the antecedents of creativity (and innovation) must be cautious in focusing only on the positive or the negative sides of individuals’ characteristics, and rather they must explore the interplay between both poles. Individuals may experience both positive and negative states/traits (Smith et al., 2016), and this both/and approach may impel them to think divergently, to challenge the status quo and to propose “out the box” and useful ideas.

Objective: In this article, our objective was to conduct a systematic literature review in order to identify the main factors that provide a fertile environment for the emergence and development of innovations.Methodology / Approach: We used systematic literature review, in order to search business field on the basis of EBSCO’s and Scopus, with identification of keywords in titles and abstracts.Originality / Relevance: This is a proposition of a research agenda on the enabling environment to the development of innovations.Main results: The results pointed out that there are factors that are manageable by the companies and others that are not manageable or of little management. The results also showed, by the number of studies on the respective factors, that the most relevant dimensions are ‘organizational culture’, ‘management and leadership’ and ‘organizational structure’.Theoretical / methodological contributions: The following research agenda is proposed: (i) how much consumer pressure can be a factor that contributes to the creation of an enabling environment to innovation; (ii) entrepreneurship as a source of innovation; (iii) dependency on large customers can negatively impact the enabling environment to innovation; (iv) the levels and ways that pessimism and optimism acted as predictors of creativity and, consequently, of the generation of innovations.

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