What Do We Really Know about Creativity Techniques? A Review of the Empirical Literature

Meinel, Martin; Voigt, Kai‐Ingo

doi:10.1142/9781786342010_0010

Cited by 16 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Other studies focus on different approaches to enhance creative abilities and outcomes, such as extrinsic incentives (e.g., Burroughs et al, 2011; Kachelmeier et al, 2019), gamification elements (e.g., Agogué et al, 2015; Zimmerling et al, 2019), leadership behaviour (e.g., Hughes et al, 2018; Kim, 2019), or creativity training (e.g., Burroughs et al, 2011; Valgeirsdottir & Onarheim, 2017). Furthermore, a substantial body of literature focuses on creativity techniques that are defined as specific sessions to facilitate the creative process by providing strategies and heuristics to develop new ideas (e.g., Herrmann & Felfe, 2014; Meinel & Voigt, 2017).…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Creativity techniques are commonly applied in different stages of the innovation process, but particularly in the idea generation stage and usually as a method for collaborative idea generation (Meinel & Voigt, 2017; Smith, 1998). According to Geschka (1983), creativity techniques rely on vastly different principles to facilitate creativity, which can be classified into a two‐by‐two matrix using two different perspectives (see Figure 1).…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, despite a large number of at least 50 different available creativity techniques (Geschka, 1983), most of the existing studies focus on one or two specific techniques (Meinel & Voigt, 2017) and are therefore unable to draw comparisons across the heterogeneous field of available techniques. Consequently, we lack a comprehensive framework of what aspects make creativity techniques helpful as well as an extensive comparison of the perceived helpfulness of different creativity techniques.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The users' perspective on how creativity techniques help in the idea generation process—A repertory grid study

Wöhler

Reinhardt

2021

Creat Innov Manage

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Despite the large number of available creativity techniques such as Brainstorming and Six Thinking Hats and their widespread use in idea generation workshops, it remains unclear what specific aspects creativity technique users perceive as helpful. We conducted five large‐scale product development workshops with 216 inexperienced students in groups of four to six people and personally interviewed a subset of 87 participants using the repertory grid procedure. The results reveal a framework of facilitating and impeding factors users associate with the methodological frame, the process view and anticipated idea characteristics of creativity techniques. Particularly helpful and differentiating factors cover visual, cognitive and emotional processing systems. In addition, we evaluate 11 commonly used creativity techniques and present underlying reasons for why some of them are perceived as more helpful than others by inexperienced users. The results thus provide a stepping stone to understand the users' perspective on creativity techniques, improve existing techniques and develop better versions of them.

show abstract

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The users' perspective on how creativity techniques help in the idea generation process—A repertory grid study

Wöhler

Reinhardt

2021

Creat Innov Manage

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These forces and their influence on creativity have been investigated from various perspectives. One stream of literature in this field focused on different creativity techniques, with different underlying mechanisms such as the division of the problem into basic parts, or the combination and integration of established solutions (Meinel and Voigt, 2017). For example, one literature review encompassing 77 empirical articles published between 1966 and 2015 revealed that brainstorming, including different specifications of it, is the most commonly used creativity technique (Meinel and Voigt, 2017).…”

Section: Factors Influencing Creativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One stream of literature in this field focused on different creativity techniques, with different underlying mechanisms such as the division of the problem into basic parts, or the combination and integration of established solutions (Meinel and Voigt, 2017). For example, one literature review encompassing 77 empirical articles published between 1966 and 2015 revealed that brainstorming, including different specifications of it, is the most commonly used creativity technique (Meinel and Voigt, 2017). However, while on average brainstorming leads to a relatively large number of ideas compared to techniques such as the six thinking hats method, brainsketching led to better idea quality (van der Lugt, 2002).…”

Section: Factors Influencing Creativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“What’s the Point of the Task?” Exploring the Influence of Task Meaning on Creativity in Crowdsourcing

Görzen

2020

Int. J. Innov. Mgt.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In pursuit of product innovation, companies increasingly use crowdsourcing for idea generation. Apart from financial motives, previous studies on the motivation of crowd workers identified intrinsic motivation, such as task meaningfulness, to play a key role. These studies, however, focused on routine tasks such as image labelling, using output quantity as the variable of interest. Since the primary goal for a creative task such as idea generation is not abundance but high quality, we investigate the influence of task meaning on workers’ effort and on output creativity. In a field experiment involving idea generation by an online crowdsourcing platform, we vary the task meaning in two different conditions, and evaluate the quality of the ideas generated. We find that higher task meaning has no positive influence on either the quantity or the creativity of the output, which carries practical implications for both commissioners and crowdsourcing platform designers.

show abstract

Exploring the Effects of Creativity Training on Creative Performance and Creative Self‐Efficacy: Evidence from a Longitudinal Study

Meinel

Wagner

Baccarella

et al. 2018

Journal of Creative Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In organizations and educational institutions, creativity trainings are the preferred approach to enhancing individual creative abilities. However, three issues regarding these trainings still remain largely unsolved. First, the question of how long‐lasting creativity training effects are has not been sufficiently answered so far. Second, the question arises whether all participants benefit from such trainings equally in terms of their creative performance (CP). Third, an increasing number of studies have shown that creativity trainings may also be able to increase participants' creative self‐efficacy (CSE), that is, the confidence in one's own creativity. Other studies, however, did not find evidence for this effect. Therefore, this article aims to address these issues by analyzing data from three measurement waves. Results reveal that participants' CP increased during the training and decreased only slightly 4 weeks after the training. Additionally, we found an effect of diminishing training returns in that the higher a participant's CP before the training the lower the training effect was. In contrast to most prior literature, we found no support for an effect of creativity training on participants' CSE. We discuss these findings and offer implications for both theory and practice. Finally, we state this study's limitations and derive avenues for further research.

show abstract

What Do We Really Know about Creativity Techniques? A Review of the Empirical Literature

Cited by 16 publications

References 0 publications

The users' perspective on how creativity techniques help in the idea generation process—A repertory grid study

The users' perspective on how creativity techniques help in the idea generation process—A repertory grid study

“What’s the Point of the Task?” Exploring the Influence of Task Meaning on Creativity in Crowdsourcing

Exploring the Effects of Creativity Training on Creative Performance and Creative Self‐Efficacy: Evidence from a Longitudinal Study

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About