A strong point in this book is its opening extensive review of creativity in organizations and professions. . . including helpful tabulations of articles that identify the motives, expectations, emotions, means, and opportunities that lead to creative acts. . . . it can provide valuable insights and encouragement to scholars and practitioners who are concerned with developing and tapping creativity in organizations. . . . Management professors and graduate students will find the book helpful. . . . --G. David Hughes in Journal of Product Innovation Management "This book definitely will be appropriate for class use in any setting focused on creativity in organizations. Presumably, these would be specialized upper-division, MBA, or Ph.D. electives. If you are interested in the topic of creativity in organizations, this is the book you must read. It is on the frontiers, and it provides a beacon for future scholarly progress on this topic because of its emphasis on how the organizational setting affects the creative process in the world of work." --Lyman Porter, University of California, Irvine "The book is itself a creative approach to creativity. The editors have attracted a talented and well-respected group of academic contributors. The message that we should abandon the romantic but flawed notion that creativity is principally the product of extraordinary individual acts is delivered forcefully, as is the companion notion that organizational contexts are the real seedbeds of creative behavior." --John R. Kimberly, Henry Bower Professor, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania "This is one of the better collections of information about creativity because it is data based, and it provides a useful comparison and contrast of conceptual and practical aspects. By clearly describing the benefits and problems associated with the topics, Creative Action in Organizations obviously practices what it preaches. I would recommend that it be used as a textbook for a graduate-level business course, particularly for an MBA program. In addition, I also recommend that it be used as a text reference for industrial ′training & development′ programs targeted at teaching employees how to develop new businesses, improve existing processes, or become better leaders (viz., corporate leadership development programs)." --Tom Wojcik, Manager, Office of Innovation, Hoechst Celanese Corporation Between the trade deficit, mergers, and the recession, the topic of creativity in organizations has become one of increasing importance. How does a company retool or refine its product with foreign and, often, less costly competition? How does human resources find creative solutions to budgeting, product development, marketing, and training? With pithy and engaging chapters from leading researchers and figures in business, government, and academia, Creative Action in Organizations explores the factors that are critical to the development and promotion of creativity to develop a revised view that is grounded in experience. This volume begins with a literature review (written as a mystery to be solved), followed by essays from researchers (Part II) and practitioners (Part III). Using the chapters as "data," the editors conclude with a content-analysis that presents a look at the most significant themes and offers a framework for conceptualizing creativity in organizations. This profound and fascinating volume is essential for students, professionals, and researchers in management and organization studies, public administration, public policy, evaluation, and psychology, as well as libraries in the above areas.

Between ivory tower academics and reality.

Rapid technological change, global competition, and economic uncertainty have all contributed to organizations seeking to improve creativity and innovation. Researchers and businesses want to know what factors facilitate or inhibit creativity in a variety of organizational settings. Individual Creativity in the Workplace identifies those factors, including what motivational and cognitive factors influence individual creativity, as well as the contextual factors that impact creativity such as teams and leadership.The book takes research findings out of the lab and provides examples of these findings put to use in real world organizations. - Identifies factors facilitating or inhibiting creativity in organizational settings - Summarizes research on creativity, cognition, and motivation - Provides real world examples of these factors operating in organizations today - Highlights creative thought processes and how to encourage them - Outlines management styles and leadership to encourage creativity - Explores how to encourage individual creativity in team contexts

Michael D. Mumford

This volume presents a distinctly multilevel perspective on creativity and innovation that considers individual-level, team-level, and firm-level factors. In illustrating these factors, this volume presents both theoretical and practical implications to guide researchers and practitioners alike in the continued study and advancement of creativity and innovation in organizations. Chapter authors not only discuss the abilities, personality, and motivational attributes that contribute to employee creativity, but they also address the impact of leadership and climate on creative performance in teams. Subsequently, firm-level influences such as planning, learning, strategy, and professions that influence the success of creative and innovative efforts are examined. With contributions from leading scholars around the globe, this book offers a comprehensive review of creativity and innovation to assist researchers and practitioners in their quests to understand and improve organizational creativity and innovation. This is an essential resource for scholars, researchers, or graduate students interested in creativity, innovation, and organizational behavior.

WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • “A delightful, compelling book that offers a dazzling array of practical, thoughtful exercises designed to spark creativity, help solve problems, foster connection, and make our lives better.”—Gretchen Rubin, New York Times bestselling author and host of the Happier podcast In an era of ambiguous, messy problems—as well as extraordinary opportunities for positive change—it’s vital to have both an inquisitive mind and the ability to act with intention. Creative Acts for Curious People is filled with ways to build those skills with resilience, care, and confidence. At Stanford University’s world-renowned Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, aka “the d.school,” students and faculty, experts and seekers bring together diverse perspectives to tackle ambitious projects; this book contains the experiences designed to help them do it. A provocative and highly visual companion, it’s a definitive resource for people who aim to draw on their curiosity and creativity in the face of uncertainty. Teeming with ideas about discovery, learning, and leading the way through unknown creative territory, Creative Acts for Curious People includes memorable stories and more than eighty innovative exercises. Curated by executive director Sarah Stein Greenberg, after being honed in the classrooms of the d.school, these exercises originated in some of the world’s most inventive and unconventional minds, including those of d.school and IDEO founder David M. Kelley, ReadyMade magazine founder Grace Hawthorne, innovative choreographer Aleta Hayes, Google chief innovation evangelist Frederik G. Pferdt, and many more. To bring fresh approaches to any challenge–world changing or close to home–you can draw on exercises such as Expert Eyes to hone observation skills, How to Talk to Strangers to foster understanding, and Designing Tools for Teams to build creative leadership. The activities are at once lighthearted, surprising, tough, and impactful–and reveal how the hidden dynamics of design can drive more vibrant ways of making, feeling, exploring, experimenting, and collaborating at work and in life. This book will help you develop the behaviors and deepen the mindsets that can turn your curiosity into ideas, and your ideas into action.

This book details a 15-year theoretical and practical research study that destroys the clichés of creative processes and inaugurates a reflective sociology on serendipity. In today’s highly innovative organizations, creative processes are proceduralized in the form of techniques and give rise to routine phenomena. This text hybridizes paradigms such as Donati’s relational sociology, the Luhmanian systemic approach, Von Foerster’s radical constructivism, Sennett’s ideas on the craftsman, the ideas of Wittgenstein and Searle on language, and the ideas of Dummett and Goedel on logic, as well as Hofstadter’s on artificial intelligence. Drawing on over 600 works, including essays and articles, the currents of thought of scholars who have dealt with the topic are identified here. The 200 techniques surveyed present common elements, such as common meta-rules of opposition, combination, and separation that determine creative behavior and are triggered by a recursive but paradoxical relationship between thought and language.