Introducing creativity in the process of information systems planning

The organizations ability to make effective use of information technology and to focus on innovation and creativity are recognized as being important. The perspective of using creativity techniques or some adaptations, to help innovation in the information systems area seems to be promising. In this article we propose a strategy for introduce creativity in the information systems planning in order to build more agile and efficient information systems, allowing therefore more competitive business.- (undefined

Information Systems Planning - How to Enhance Creativity?

The global competitiveness and the organizations ability to make effective use of information technology and to focus on innovation and creativity are recognized as being important. The perspective of using creativity techniques or some adaptations, to help innovation in the area of information systems seems to be promising.In this article we propose a strategy for the introduction of creativity in the information systems planning in order to build more agile and efficient information systems, allowing therefore more competitive business.- (undefined

Human Computation and Convergence

Humans are the most effective integrators and producers of information, directly and through the use of information-processing inventions. As these inventions become increasingly sophisticated, the substantive role of humans in processing information will tend toward capabilities that derive from our most complex cognitive processes, e.g., abstraction, creativity, and applied world knowledge. Through the advancement of human computation - methods that leverage the respective strengths of humans and machines in distributed information-processing systems - formerly discrete processes will combine synergistically into increasingly integrated and complex information processing systems. These new, collective systems will exhibit an unprecedented degree of predictive accuracy in modeling physical and techno-social processes, and may ultimately coalesce into a single unified predictive organism, with the capacity to address societies most wicked problems and achieve planetary homeostasis.Comment: Pre-publication draft of chapter. 24 pages, 3 figures; added references to page 1 and 3, and corrected typ

Improving Design of Systems Supporting Creativity-intensive Processes – A Cross-industry Focus Group Evaluation

Organizations depend on the creative potential of their members to continuously develop innovative solutions. Groups commonly approach creative processes using collaborative IT. However, current design of information systems does not cater to the business processes representing the context in which groups operate. Creativity-intensive processes are a conceptualization of business processes that involve creativity. Voigt, Bergener, and Becker (2013) developed an explanatory design theory for information systems supporting creativity-intensive processes. The core component of the design theory is an information system architecture for creativity-intensive process support systems (CPSS). This paper evaluates the utility of the CPSS architecture to comprehensively support creativity-intensive processes. Three exploratory cross-industry focus groups, in which the architecture instantiation CreativeFlow was demonstrated, suggest that the features of CreativeFlow and the underlying architectural concepts are useful in supporting practitioners’ processes, especially for the support of creative group processes. However, three modifications to the CPSS architecture emerge: increased freedom for choosing individuals responsible for group tasks, differentiated authorization for creating and assigning creative group tasks, and advanced communication support for initiation of standard workflows. The evaluation further contributes recommendations for tool features and four research issues to advance system design of tools supporting creativity in business processes. The study provides insights for future information system evaluations in Design Science Research on Information Systems

Creativity and Information Systems: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation of Creativity in IS

Be productive. Since the industrial revolution, managers have had an almost singular focus on equipping employees with productivity tools in productivity-supportive environments. Information technologies—systems designed to increase productivity—entered the marketplace in the 1980\u27s and were initially credited with the subsequent boom. Eventually, innovation was shown to be the primary spark, and the managerial focus shifted. Increasingly, the imperative is: be creative. This dissertation investigates how a technology environment designed to be fast and mechanistic influences the slow and organic act of creativity. Creativity—the production of novel and useful solutions—can be an elusive subject and has a varied history within Information Systems (IS) research so the first essay is devoted to conducting an historical analysis of creativity research across several domains and developing a holistic, technologically-aware framework for researching creativity in modern organizations. IS literature published in the Senior Scholar\u27s journals is then mapped to the proposed framework as a means of identifying unexplored regions of the creativity phenomenon. This essay concludes with a discussion of future directions for creativity research within IS. The second essay integrates task-technology fit and conservation of resources theory and employs an experimental design to explore the task of being creative with an IS. Borrowing from fine arts research, the concept of IS Mastery is introduced as a resource which, when deployed efficiently, acts to conserve resources and enhance performance on cognitively demanding creative tasks. The third essay investigates an expectedly strong but unexpectedly negative relationship between technology fit and creative performance. This finding launches an exploration into alternate study designs, theoretical models and performance measures as we search for the true nature of the relationship between creativity and technology fit. The essay concludes with an updated map of the technology-to-performance chain. These essays contribute to IS research by creating a technology-aware creativity framework for motivating and positioning future research, by showing that the IS is neither a neutral nor frictionless collaborator in creative tasks and by exposing the inhibiting effects of a well-fitting technology for creative performance

Creativity and Entrepreneurship - The Role of Creativity Support Systems for Start-ups

Successful start-ups require a number of organizational, efficient and systematic entrepreneurial actions. In addition to the acquisition and the successful use of resources, especially the identification and development of ideas to business models play an important role for the company\u27s success. In this context, creativity exhibits a major importance and creativity support in the phase entrepreneurial activities turn out to be essential. This article discusses the relationship between creativity support, information technology and entrepreneurial activities. With a selective exploratory study, we deepened the understanding of creativity support and information technology on entrepreneurship and especially revealed a lack of the use of creativity support systems, which can aid the development of innovative ideas and lead to beneficial products and services. The compiled results show that the use of creativity techniques and creativity support systems for start-ups is an important component that can fundamentally contribute to the success

Information Security: Going Digital

Because “going digital” regards using digital technologies to fundamentally change the way things get done, information security is necessarily engaged in going digital. Society and science are going digital. For the sciences, this digitalization process invokes an emerging model of the science of design that incorporates the assembly of information systems from a wide variety of platform ecosystems. According to principles of bounded rationality and bounded creativity, this mode of design requires more creativity to develop needed functionality from a finite set of available platforms. Going digital requires more creativity in designers of all types of information systems. Furthermore, the designers’ goals are changing. The traditional model of information systems is representational: the data in the system represents (reflects) reality. Newer information systems, equipped with 3D printing and robotics actually create reality. Reality represents (reflects) the data in the system. The paper explores the example of information security. Designers of security for information systems not only must be more creative, they must design for more goals. The security task is no longer just protecting the digital system, the security task is protecting the products of the digital system

Contextual factors which influence creativity in requirements engineering

In many disciplines, creativity has been recognised as an important part of problem solving. In business, creativity enables the generation of better solutions and provides an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage. In Information Systems (IS) creativity assists developers in finding solutions to difficult problems by helping to efficiently utilise available resources and allows the more effective planning and running of complex projects. One of the most important aspects of IS development is Requirements Engineering (RE), the development activity aimed at understanding the needs and wants of IS customers. While previous RE researchers suggested that creativity is crucial in building high quality information systems, fostering creative outcomes in RE is difficult as it is affected by the multifaceted socioorganisational context within which IS development commonly takes place. This paper reports findings from an empirical study into creativity in RE. Specifically, it reports various contextual factors which were found to influence the creativity of individuals and their teams<br /

The Concept of Creativity in the Information Systems Discipline: Past, Present, and Prospects

In 1993 Couger et al. stated in an MIS Quarterly article on creativity in information systems (IS) organizations that the topic of creativity is under-researched in the IS discipline. Is the subject of creativity—despite its undisputable importance for individuals, organizations, and societies—still a neglected area in IS research? In what contexts, with what methods, and with what results have IS researchers studied the phenomenon of creativity? And what creativity-related themes warrant further investigation? In this article we analyze, based on six analytical dimensions, IS studies on creativity published in the eight top-ranked IS journals as recommended by the Association for Information Systems. The analysis provides a detailed picture of how the concept of creativity has been treated in our discipline’s arguably most influential publication outlets. It becomes apparent that IS researchers have been predominantly employing a rather limited number of research designs aiming at a rather limited number of creativity-related topics. Grounded in our analysis, we discuss the prospects of creativity research in the IS discipline and provide a future research agenda. In doing so, we propose three main research themes that can meaningfully contribute to our discipline

Learners reconceptualising education: Widening participation through creative engagement?

This paper argues that engaging imaginatively with ways in which statutory and further education is provided and expanding the repertoire of possible transitions into higher education, is necessary for providers both in higher education and in the contexts and phases which precede study at this level. Fostering dispositions for creativity in dynamic engagement with educational technology together with the consideration of pedagogy, learning objects, inclusion, policy and the management of change, requires innovative provision to span the spaces between school, home, work and higher education learning. Reporting on The Aspire Pilot, a NESTA-funded initiative at The Open University, the paper offers the beginning of a theoretical frame for considering learning, learners and learning systems in the information age prioritizing learner agency. It will report emergent empirical findings from this inter-disciplinary project, with a significant e-dimension, which seeks to foster the creativity of 13-19 year olds in considering future learning systems, developing provocations for others to explore creative but grounded possibilities. It explores implications arising from this project for approaches that may facilitate widening participation in higher education