Realistic Creativity Training for Innovation Practitioners: The Know-Recognize-React Model

Creativity is increasingly being recognized as important raw material for innovation, which highlights the importance of identifying ways to increase the creativity of practitioners. In this article, we describe our efforts to design a creativity training program specifically for innovation practitioners. Our aim was to develop a program that would be both theoretically sound (i.e., based on a rigorous scientific foundation) and relevant for practitioners (i.e., applicable to real-world contexts). Our transdisciplinary study employed co-creation as a method to ensure that three layers of focus would be taken into consideration: metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive monitoring, and metacognitive control. The result is a program called Creative Awareness Training, which is based on the new Know–Recognize–React model

Constraints and Creativity: Classifying, Balancing, and Managing Constraints

Constraints are everywhere, whether as fundamental constraints such as forces of gravity and the nature of materials or as constraints integral to humans such as cognition, knowledge, and personality. Thus, creativity always exists in an environment shaped by constraints. In fact, constraints are inherent to the very definition of creativity, as the two elements it requires -originality and usefulness -are constraints in themselves; thus, constraints can indeed be seen as a part of the concept of creativity itself. Moreover, contrary to common belief, constraints are not inhibitors of creativity -they can also be necessary enablers of creativity. In creativity, research constraints have become a common topic, especially on the rise in the last two decades. Many ways to conceptualize and understand types and categories of constraints have been developed, and in this chapter, these various approaches will be reviewed, presented, and unified. The chapter looks at classifications of constraints, the concept of balancing constraints in creativity, and constraint management, and presents a new model for “Classes of Constraints” through which current research efforts can be organized and understood

Product creativity assessment of innovations: considering the creative process

Creativity is a critical component that feeds into all stages of innovation and design processes by promoting inspiration, ideation, and implementation of ideas, revealing the need for thorough research to support design creativity. Assessment of product creativity is a reoccurring topic in creativity research, while the role of consumer’s knowledge of the creative process behind the product is fairly unexplored. In this paper, we present an empirical study investigating whether providing information about a complex development process could amplify consumer’s perception of product creativity. Does storytelling about the process contribute to amplifying creativity ratings? What form of storytelling is needed to make an impact? Results from 134 respondents showed a small but not significant amplifying effect from the additional process information; however, an important learning can be drawn about the form of storytelling needed. An absolute minimal form was chosen here, displaying the need for investigating other, more elaborate forms. Additionally, the analysis showed that creativity was an important driver for the assessment of other product attributes such as purchasability, portraying the importance of design creativity and underlining the importance of further investigating the role of creative process information in amplifying consumer’s perception of creativity in products