The stimulation mechanism of students' entrepreneurial intention in entrepreneurship course: A trait activation theory perspective

This study examines the extent to which flow experience inhibits/enhances the effects of students' creativity on their entrepreneurial intentions. This study provides evidence to support the contention that flow experience moderates the relationship between creativity and entrepreneurial intention by reference to a field survey of 226 Chinese college students in six college classes. Adopted by a hierarchical regression, this study found that creativity has a significant positive impact on entrepreneurial behavior. Within the subdimensions of flow, Intrinsic work motivation and Work enjoyment plays a significant positive moderating role in the relationship between creativity and entrepreneurial behavior, while absorption does not have such moderating effect. These findings reveal the process and mechanism by which creativity affects entrepreneurial intention and the associated psychological contingency factors.

Antecedents of knowledge-seeking intentions and efforts within new product development teams: empirical evidence from knowledge-based Chinese companies

Purpose

This study aims to examine the antecedents of knowledge-seeking intentions (SIs) and efforts within new product development (NPD) teams.

Design/methodology/approach

Data was collected from 331 employees affiliated with 29 NPD teams across 18 Chinese firms in five high-tech and knowledge-based industries via an online assessment and a survey. Hierarchical linear modelling was used to test the hypotheses using HLM and Mplus software.

Findings

The results of this study show that intrinsic task motivation (IM) and personal task experience (TE) positively relate to SIs, whereas leadership support (LS) and shared culture (SC) negatively relate to knowledge-seeking efforts (SEs). SIs partially mediate the relationship between IM and SEs, while they fully mediate the relationship between TE and SEs. Additionally, customer orientation (CO) positively moderates the relationship between SIs and SEs.

Research limitations/implications

Data collection was completed online by relying on an existing version of the Abedi Creativity Test. The samples involve 18 companies in a High-Tech Development Zone in China, which indicates limited generalizability.

Practical implications

Effective NPD depends on successful marketing–R&D integration and knowledge exchange within the NPD team. Besides, organizations need to find ways to stimulate NPD team members’ IM and also through various ways to inspire more efforts from team members under the condition of supportive leadership and culture.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the knowledge management and marketing literature on NPD teamwork by examining knowledge-seeking phenomena from the perspective of the internal knowledge market and contributes to knowledge-seeking research by revealing the antecedents of SIs and SEs at both the individual and organizational level.

Integrated Constraints in Creativity: Foundations for a Unifying Model

Despite their negative connotation, and the pervasiveness of blue-sky, outside-the-box thinking metaphors, constraints are at the heart of creativity. Using a multidisciplinary approach, as part of the Integrated Constraints in Creativity (IConIC) model, I propose that creative outcomes emerge from the successful leveraging of different types of constraints. I introduce a new, constraint-based definition of creativity, grounded in categorization theory, and parsimonious taxonomies of constraints based on which I outline testable predictions and corroborating evidence. I argue that constraints differ in terms of their flexibility (fixed, faux-fixed, or flexible) and functions (exclusionary or focusing), and in terms of whether they apply to the problem search time or the problem search space. Within the search space, constraints can refer to specific concepts or categories. I also advance a distinction between creativity maximizers and satisficers as a function of creativity goals, semantic networks, expertise, and the new constructs of constraint leveraging power and constraint leveraging mindset, that help to explain differences in successful integration of constraints for creativity and creative achievement.

First inspire, then instruct to improve students' creativity

Creativity is one of the most essential skills for success in life in our dynamic, complex world. For instance, we are currently facing major problems with the COVID-19 pandemic, which requires creative thinking for solutions. To increase the pool of creative thinkers, we need tools that can assess and support people's creativity. With advances in technologies, as well as in computer and learning sciences, we can create such support tools. In this study, we investigated the effectiveness of a creativity-support system that we developed in the level editor of an educational game called Physics Playground. Our goal was to improve college students' creativity. Participants (n = 114) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions and instructed to create as many creative game levels as possible in about two hours. The four conditions included: (1) Inspirational - with supports that provided access to a website with example levels, a brainstorming tool, and a remote association activity; (2) Instructional - with supports that provided specific instructions to first design as many levels as possible, then pick four of the levels, and enhance them using a tool called SCAMPER; (3) Both - with both inspirational and instructional supports; and (4) No Support, which did not include any creativity supports. The major finding from this research was that the Both condition was significantly more effective than the other conditions in improving students' creativity measured by the creativity of the game levels created by the students. Implications of the findings, limitations, and future research are discussed.

Exploring the Creative Process: Integrating Psychometric and Eye-Tracking Approaches

This exploratory study aims at integrating the psychometric approach to studying creativity with an eye-tracking methodology and thinking-aloud protocols to potentially untangle the nuances of the creative process. Wearing eye-tracking glasses, one hundred adults solved a drawing creativity test - The Test of Creative Thinking-Drawing Production (TCT-DP) - and provided spontaneous comments during this process. Indices of visual activity collected during the eye-tracking phase explained a substantial amount of variance in psychometric scores obtained in the test. More importantly, however, clear signs of methodological synergy were observed when all three sources (psychometrics, eye-tracking, and coded thinking-aloud statements) were integrated. The findings illustrate benefits of using a blended methodology for a more insightful analysis of creative processes, including creative learning and creative problem-solving.

Methodological Issues in Measuring Creativity: A Systematic Literature Review

The growing body of creativity research has raised several challenging issues with regard to the measurement of this construct. This paper aims to provide a review of current challenging methodological issues related to measuring creativity. Five methodological issues are discussed: selecting measurement instruments, sampling, testing conditions, psychometric properties and domain-generality/specificity of creativity. This paper reveals that there remain a number of unresolved issues and serious questions surrounding the measurement of creativity. Research gaps and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Not Just How Much You Know: Interactional Effect of Cultural Knowledge and Metacognition on Creativity in a Global Context

The ability to think and solve problems creatively in a multicultural environment is critical for success in the 21st century. Integrating research on creative cognition and cultural intelligence, we examine the interactional effects of two cognitive capabilities – cultural knowledge and cultural metacognition – on individuals’ creativity in multicultural teams. We propose that although cultural knowledge is useful for creativity, too much knowledge can be detrimental because of cognitive overload and entrenchment. This inverted U-shaped relationship however, is moderated by cultural metacognition. Results of our study support our hypothesis of an inverted U-shape relationship between cultural knowledge and creativity. As expected, we found that the curvilinear effect of cultural knowledge occurs only for individuals with low metacognition. For high cultural metacognition individuals, cultural knowledge has no effect on creativity. These findings offer new insights and practical implications for creativity in today's global environment.

Thin slices of creativity: using single-word utterances to assess creative cognition

We investigated the hypothesis that individual differences in creative cognition can be manifest even in brief responses, such as single-word utterances. Participants (n = 193) were instructed to say a verb upon seeing a noun displayed on a computer screen and were cued to respond creatively to half of the nouns. For every noun-verb pair (72 pairs per subject), we assessed the semantic distance between the noun and the verb, using latent semantic analysis (LSA). Semantic distance was higher in the cued ("creative") condition than the uncued condition, within subjects. Critically, between subjects, semantic distance in the cued condition had a strong relationship to a creativity factor derived from a battery of verbal, nonverbal, and achievement-based creativity measures (β= .50), and this relation remained when controlling for intelligence and personality. The data show that creative cognition can be assessed reliably and validly from such thin slices of behavior.

Patient Involvement in Treatment Decision Making Can Help or Hinder Placebo Analgesia

Experiments have found that choosing between placebo analgesics can reduce pain more than being assigned a placebo analgesic. Because earlier research has shown prior experience moderates choice effects in other contexts, we tested whether prior experience with a pain stimulus moderates this placebo-choice association. Before a cold water pain task, participants were either told that an inert cream would reduce their pain or they were not told this information. Additionally, participants chose between one of two inert creams for the task or they were not given choice. Importantly, we also measured prior experience with cold water immersion. Individuals with prior cold water immersion experience tended to display greater placebo analgesia when given choice, whereas participants without this experience tended to display greater placebo analgesia without choice. Prior stimulus experience appears to moderate the effect of choice on placebo analgesia.

Habitual Creativity: Revising Habit, Reconceptualizing Creativity

Current psychological scholarship is based on a dichotomy between habit, associated with automatic reflex behavior, and creativity, which involves deliberation, purpose and heuristic procedures. However, this account is problematic and contradicts everyday experience where mastery, for instance, is one of the highest levels of creative performance achieved within a habitual practice. This article argues that such a separation misrepresents both habit and creativity with important theoretical and practical consequences. A first step toward reconciling the two terms is made by revisiting a series of foundational strands of theory from psychology and related disciplines. In light of these sources, habit is reformulated as a social, situated, and open system, and habitual creativity defined as the intrinsically creative nature of customary action, reflected in the way habits adjust to dynamic contexts, the way they are used, combined, and ultimately perfected. Further distinctions are then made between habit, improvisation, and innovation. Both improvisational and innovative creativity are embedded in habitual forms and this is well illustrated by craftwork: a practiced type of activity on the basis of which artisans improvise, whenever obstacles or difficulties are encountered, and even get to innovate when their intention is to generate novel artifacts or work techniques.