Analysis of the Personality, Motivation, Ability, and Environment Affecting Creativity in Japanese Business

Abstract

Recently, there have been only a few quantitative researches on creativity in business especially in Japan, although creativity is important for business performance. This paper aims to clarify the factors which affect creativity in business. Judging from previous researches, it can be classified that the factors probably associate with creativity into four categories: personality, ability, motivation, and environment. This paper can also aim to verify that CF (creativity factor) could be better predictors for business performance than IQ (intelligence quotient) test score (IQ score). Accordingly, the authors hypothesize that: (1) CF can be found in any factors of personality, ability, motivation, or environment; and (2) CF correlates more closely with performance than IQ score. The authors requested 303 respondents to answer Web-based questionnaires consisting of 565 questions within a set period of time. The respondents belong to sales divisions in Japanese venture businesses. Their supervisors evaluated their creativity using a five-point scale. The authors used their supervisors’ evaluation as a criterion variable of creativity to build a multi-regression analysis model. The results showed that the factors, “independence and activeness” and “exciting” are 5% statistically significant accelerators in the “personality” category; In the “ability”, “new combination of ideas”, and “decision-making speed” significantly accelerate creativity; In the “motivation”, “interest of work”, “positive feedback (negative)”, and “reward for work” significantly accelerate creativity. In the “environment”, there are five significant accelerators, such as “excellent colleague”, “criticism of ideas”, “autonomy”, “conservative atmosphere”, and an impediment, such as “excessive workload”. Although CF does not correlate with IQ score, it partially correlates with both the TTCT (Torrance Test for Creative Thinking) score and the performance of the respondents. Furthermore, IQ score does not correlate with performance. Consequently, CF could be better predictors for business performance than IQ score.