Making creativity: the value of multiple filters in the innovation process

Abstract

Creativity - often defined as developing something novel that fits its context, and has value - has gained increasing attention within countries and organisations, especially as more leaders see it as a renewable resource. Despite having long been studied as a concept in psychology and management theories, and recently, in neuroscience and brain research, it is often regarded as an intangible concept, resulted from a 'mysterious process'. This conceptual paper offers an applicable and practicable framework of information process of creativity that is built on previous works relating to creative disciplines and information process as critical components and inputs. The framework suggests opportunity to design empirical investigation into creativity's causality as well as a discipline of teaching creativity that helps improve creative performance, especially in an entrepreneurial space. We begin with a brief review of the creative process its connection to information processing, propose a tentative framework for integrating the two ideas, and provide examples of how it might work. We close with implications for further practical and theoretical directions for this idea.