(Press-News.org) HOUSTON – (April 8, 2014) – Creativity and innovation are not sufficiently integrated in either the business world or academic research, according to a new study by Rice University, the University of Edinburgh and Brunel University.
The findings are the result of the authors' review of the rapidly growing body of research into creativity and innovation in the workplace, with particular attention to the period from 2002 to 2013.
"There are many of us who study employee creativity and many of us who study innovation and idea implementation, but we don't talk to each other; we're siloed," said Jing Zhou, the Houston Endowment Professor of Management at Rice's Jones Graduate School of Business. "The review's goal is to integrate both." Zhou co-authored the paper with Neil Anderson, a professor of human resource management at Brunel, and Kristina Potocnik, a lecturer in human resource management at Edinburgh. The paper will be published in the Journal of Management's annual review issue.
The authors said creativity and innovation are complex, multilevel phenomena that pan out over time and require skillful leadership to maximize the benefits of new ways of working. However, Zhou said, the vast majority of companies operating today are "not doing a good job in translating creative ideas so they have an impact on the firm's performance. Management needs to pay attention to capture employee creativity and implement the creative ideas."
Zhou said companies focus too specifically on current goals and don't take the risks creativity requires. She said two companies that have found a way to incentivize, encourage and institutionalize employee creativity are 3M and Google, which allow employees time to explore creative ideas.
"We need to better train managers to see an idea and run with it," Zhang said. "If you wait for the idea to be ready to be implemented, it might be too late. Managers need to capture promising ideas and then translate them into products, processes and improved customer service."
The study proposes 60 specific research questions for future studies as well as 11 themes that warrant greater attention from researchers. They include the roles of customers, the Internet and social media, organizational culture and climate in creativity and innovation, and leadership style in the creativity-innovation cycle.
The authors said addressing these questions and themes would generate a "quantum leap" forward in understanding the complex phenomena comprising workplace creativity and innovation. "Researchers active in this diverse field need to embrace these challenges," the authors concluded. "Without innovation, few organizations can hope to survive and prosper; we believe that precisely the same holds true for research into creativity and innovation research in the future."
This Journal of Management article comes on the heels of a 2013 article titled "Core Knowledge Employee Creativity and Firm Performance: The Moderating Role of Riskiness Orientation, Firm Size and Realized Absorptive Capacity" by Zhou and co-authors in the journal Personnel Psychology. That first-of-its-kind study found that employee creativity did not directly lead to company performance and that only when firms made an effort was creativity channeled into performance.
"Firms all say they want their employees to be creative," Zhou said. "The assumption is that once the employees demonstrate creativity, firms can translate it to firm-level performance. Our study proved otherwise." The study suggested managers need to cultivate, recognize and channel their employees' creativity into actual firm performance.
INFORMATION:
For a copy of the study, "Innovation and Creativity in Organizations: A State-of-the-Science Review, Prospective Commentary and Guiding Framework," e-mail jfalk@rice.edu.
This news release can be found online at http://news.rice.edu.
Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.
Related materials:
Zhou bio: http://business.rice.edu/Jing_Zhou.
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,920 undergraduates and 2,567 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6.3-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 2 for "best value" among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go here.
Rice U. study: Creativity and innovation need to talk more
2014-04-08
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
The surprising truth about obsessive-compulsive thinking
2014-04-08
Montreal, April 8, 2014 — People who check whether their hands are clean or imagine their house might be on fire are not alone. New research from Concordia University and 15 other universities worldwide shows that 94 per cent of people experience unwanted, intrusive thoughts, images and/or impulses.
The international study, which was co-authored by Concordia psychology professor Adam Radomsky and published in the Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, examined people on six continents.
Radomsky and his colleagues found that the thoughts, images and ...
Where credit is due: How acknowledging expertise can help conservation efforts
2014-04-08
Scientists know that tapping into local expertise is key to conservation efforts aimed at protecting biodiversity – but researchers rarely give credit to these local experts. Now some scientists are saying that's a problem, both for the local experts and for the science itself.
To address the problem, a group of scientists is calling for conservation researchers to do a better job of publicly acknowledging the role of local experts and other non-scientists in conservation biology.
"For example, in the rainforests of the Yucatán, scientists couldn't even begin to do ...
Blocking DNA repair mechanisms could improve radiation therapy for deadly brain cancer
2014-04-08
DALLAS – April 8, 2014 – UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have demonstrated in both cancer cell lines and in mice that blocking critical DNA repair mechanisms could improve the effectiveness of radiation therapy for highly fatal brain tumors called glioblastomas.
Radiation therapy causes double-strand breaks in DNA that must be repaired for tumors to keep growing. Scientists have long theorized that if they could find a way to block repairs from being made, they could prevent tumors from growing or at least slow down the growth, thereby extending patients' survival. ...
What songbirds tell us about how we learn
2014-04-08
This news release is available in French. When you throw a wild pitch or sing a flat note, it could be that your basal ganglia made you do it. This area in the middle of the brain is involved in motor control and learning. And one reason for that errant toss or off-key note may be that your brain prompted you to vary your behavior to help you learn, from trial-and-error, to perform better.
But how does the brain do this, how does it cause you to vary your behavior?
Along with researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, Indian Institute of Science ...
NASA satellite sees Tropical Depression Peipah approaching Philippines
2014-04-08
As Tropical Depression Peipah continues moving toward the central Philippines, NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead and took an infrared look at the cloud top temperatures for clues about its strength.
On April 8 at 05:11 UTC/1:11 a.m. EDT/11 p.m. Manila local time, the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument known as AIRS gathered infrared data on Tropical Depression Peipah. AIRS is one of the instruments that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. The AIRS data showed thunderstorms with very cold cloud-top temperatures surrounded the center of the low-level circulation ...
Intranasal ketamine confers rapid antidepressant effect in depression
2014-04-08
A research team from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai published the first controlled evidence showing that an intranasal ketamine spray conferred an unusually rapid antidepressant effect –within 24 hours—and was well tolerated in patients with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder. This is the first study to show benefits with an intranasal formulation of ketamine. Results from the study were published online in the peer-reviewed journal Biological Psychiatry on April 2, 2014.
Of 18 patients completing two treatment days with ketamine or saline, eight ...
DNA modifications measured in blood signal related changes in the brain
2014-04-08
Johns Hopkins researchers say they have confirmed suspicions that DNA modifications found in the blood of mice exposed to high levels of stress hormone — and showing signs of anxiety — are directly related to changes found in their brain tissues.
The proof-of-concept study, reported online ahead of print in the June issue of Psychoneuroendocrinology, offers what the research team calls the first evidence that epigenetic changes that alter the way genes function without changing their underlying DNA sequence — and are detectable in blood — mirror alterations in brain tissue ...
New methodology to find out about yeast changes during wine fermentation
2014-04-08
This knowledge is of particular interest for producers, since changes in the grape directly affect the chemical composition of the must.
The thesis entitled "Estudios avanzados de la fisiología de levadura en condiciones de vinificación. Bases para el desarrollo de un modelo predictivo" [Advanced studies into yeast physiology in vinification conditions. Bases for developing a forecasting model] is part of the Demeter project. This project seeks to study and find out the effects of climate change on viticultural and oenological activities, and to come up with new strategies ...
From learning in infancy to planning ahead in adulthood: Sleep's vital role for memory
2014-04-08
Boston - April 8, 2014 - Babies and young children make giant developmental leaps all of the time. Sometimes, it seems, even overnight they figure out how to recognize certain shapes or what the word "no" means no matter who says it. It turns out that making those leaps could be a nap away: New research finds that infants who nap are better able to apply lessons learned to new skills, while preschoolers are better able to retain learned knowledge after napping.
"Sleep plays a crucial role in learning from early in development," says Rebecca Gómez of the University of ...
Innovative, coordinated brain care could save billions of health care dollars
2014-04-08
INDIANAPOLIS -- Studies have shown that a new patient and caregiver centered model of innovative, coordinated brain care for older adults improves health outcomes and quality of care for those with cognitive impairment. A new study from the Regenstrief Institute, Eskenazi Health and Indiana University Center for Aging Research implementation scientists who developed the Healthy Aging Brain Center care model shows that such care also produces impressive cost savings.
The Healthy Aging Brain Center care model generated an annual net cost savings of up to $2,856 per patient ...