Even Sherlock Needs a Dr. Watson: A Theory of Creativity Stimulators

Abstract

In this paper I develop a theory of “creativity stimulators”, and ask who can serve as better creativity stimulators in an organization. I examine two aspects of serving as a creativity stimulator: the extent to which an employee contributes to coworkers’ creativity (i.e., intensity of contribution) and the number of coworkers an employee contributes to (i.e., span of contribution). I argue that a stimulator’s relational social capital determines her motivation to take the role of a creativity stimulator; while the stimulator’s structural social capital underlines her ability to contribute to others’ creativity. Integrating these, I hypothesize that the stimulator’s relational social capital interacts with her structural social capital in predicting both the intensity and span of her contribution to coworkers’ creativity. In addition, I hypothesize that learning goal orientation, a stable motivational orientation, interacts with relational social capital in predicting the intensity and span of a stimulator’s contribution. I validated the measures in a pilot study, and tested the hypothesized model on two architecture companies. Results show that the interaction of relational and structural social capital significantly predicts both the intensity and span of a stimulators contribution, and the interaction of relational social capital and learning goal orientation significantly predicts span of contribution.