A better understanding of the role and underlying mechanism of stimulating mental imagery in improving the creativity of “ordinary” users

Abstract

Stimulating the creative abilities of users involved in co-creation practices is crucial for companies and co-creation platforms. These “ordinary” users, sought after to provide ideas for new products and/or services, are often not particularly creative. Stimulating their creative capacity is, therefore, critical. From this perspective, mental imagery, whose role in the creative process has often been stressed in psychology, appears to play a key role. The objective of this research is to examine whether, by increasing the activity of mental imagery, stimulating mental imagery can increase participants’ creativity. Two experiments confirm the mediating role of mental imagery and underline the positive effects of such stimulation on the creativity of the ideas generated.