Creativity Matter Research Articles

Creativity’s Need for Relevance in Research and Real Life: Let’s Set a New Agenda for Positive Outcomes

Abstract Despite an ongoing surge of interest in creativity (both in academia and the public eye), it is essential that researchers focus on why creativity matters. Studies that empathize variables that help increase creativity are absolutely valuable, but I argue that need more work on how creativity can lead to positive outcomes. Much of the existing literature examines how creativity can improve school or work performance – which it does. Yet when these studies are compared with similar ones on conscientiousness, it is hard to argue that increasing creativity is the best way to succeed in school or work (at least using traditional metrics). I argue that as a field, we need to expand our ideas about how creativity can be beneficial. I end with an open call for suggestions.

Design and Redesign as a Creative Challenge

In this paper, we want to show how interesting and creative a redesign activity for a logo is. To design a logo is a matter of creativity and ‘graphic culture’. To redesign a logo (we have introduced ‘graphic leap’ in logo design to rename a redesign activity) is ‘something special’. This study concerns the creation of easy ways to design logos and to select the main constituent elements to realise them. It is a creative work to balance all the features involved in a graphic representation to create a harmonious design. In this paper, we have answered two questions: a new logo means a ‘refresh design’, by using the same elements, but in a modern redesign or a new logo without any connection to the elements of the old one. The case study is about the logos of the faculties of our university. Keywords: Design, redesign, logo, graphic leap.

Playing the interdisciplinary game across education–medical education boundaries: sites of knowledge, collaborative identities and methodological innovations

ABSTRACTThis paper aims to interrogate the potential and challenges in interdisciplinary working across disciplinary boundaries by examining a longitudinal partnership designed to research student experiences of digital technologies in undergraduate medicine established by the authors of this paper (one from Education and the other from Medical Education). The paper is situated in current methodological trends including the changing value of replicability and evidence-based methods and increases in qualitative and mixed methods studies in medical education, whilst education research has seen growing encouragement for randomized controlled trials and large-scale quantitative studies. A critical analysis of the partnership interactions is framed by Holland’s positional and imagined identities, negotiated across ‘figured’ worlds and the concept of epistemic games that guide knowledge construction. We consider social, political and cultural challenges; and how ‘in-between’ sites of knowledge were established where the academic identity of each was shaped by engaging with the other and new theoretical, methodological and ethical understandings were co-constructed. The paper concludes that despite the ongoing challenges, ‘bottom-up’ partnerships can contribute to a growth in interdisciplinarity which might itself be understood as a boundary object. Interdisciplinarity necessitates improvisation and boundary crossing and can, therefore, always be considered a matter of negotiation, creativity and collaboration.

Mindful creativity matters: trajectories of reported functioning after severe traumatic brain injury as a function of mindful creativity in patients' relatives: a multilevel analysis.

The objective of the present investigation was to examine the association of mindful creativity with the trajectory of recovery (emotional, interpersonal, cognitive, and total functioning) of patients with severe TBI. This was drawn from a subsample of an adult prospective cohort study on severe TBI in Switzerland; patients and their relatives were assessed at 3, 6, and 12months (patients N=176, relatives N=176). Predictor measures were assessed using Mindful Creativity Scale-short form and time (trajectory of functioning of the patient over time). Outcome measures were assessed using Patient Competency Rating Scale for Neuro-rehabilitation (PCRS-NR; measuring emotional, interpersonal, cognitive, and total functioning post-injury). All measures were assessed at each time point. Mixed linear models were run separately for ages >50 and ≤50 (i.e., bimodal distribution). Patients' mindful creativity showed no significant association with patients' functioning across time in any of the models. In all age groups, interpersonal functioning decreased across time (slope>50=-4.66, p=.037; slope≤50=-7.19, p=.007). Interestingly, in age group ≤50, interpersonal functioning increased when looking at relative mindful creativity by time (slope=1.69, p=.005). Additionally, relatives mindful creativity was significantly associated with patients' functioning in age group ≤50: (a) patients' total functioning (slope=0.18, p=.03) and (b) cognitive functioning (slope=0.72, p=.020). Relatives' mindful creativity was significantly associated with patients' functioning after severe TBI. Implications for treatment and future research are discussed.

Swampwalls: dark matter and the lumpen army of art

Dominant notions of contemporary art are being overturned not by some radical avant-garde theory or movement, but instead by an “uprising” from within the confines of the “art factory,” as well as by newly embodied instances of informal everyday creativity that high culture has long overlooked. Theorists Negt and Kluge might have described this insurrection as the partial unblocking of a counter-public or proletarian sphere: a realm of fragmented identities and working class fantasy generated in response to the alienating conditions of capitalism. A more specific cultural interpretation suggests this mutiny from within and assault from below is the irrepressible brightening of “creative dark matter:” that marginalized and systematically underdeveloped aggregate of creative productivity, which nonetheless reproduces the material and symbolic economy of high culture. The results are explosive, or at least potentially so as this long, pent-up shadow archive spills out into the once forbidden dwelling place of mainstream law and order and high cultural privilege. Meanwhile, a new wave of socially engaged art is thriving on the margins of the art world. Like an enormous production warehouse this “post-public” creativity is developing sustainable farming, reenacting historical labor demonstrations, providing public services lost to decades of deregulatory economic policy, and initiating local bartering systems and environmental cleanups. Its vitality is something Joseph Beuys could have only dream about. And not surprisingly even this “autonomous” and “Interventionist” art is selectively becoming part of the mainstream culture industry through what Gilles Deleuze describes as an “apparatus of capture.” Nevertheless, one result of this new confrontation reveals this vibrant imaginary “from below” is pushing artistic production, pushing also discourse, pedagogy and cultural institutions into radically re-thinking definitions and possibilities not only involving the possibilities of contemporary avant-garde art practices, but also about the very nature of creativity, democracy, and political agency more broadly.

Transfeminist Genealogies in Spain

Abstract Tracing genealogies is a profoundly political and creative matter. The authors' commitment is to seek and recognize where these genealogies are located. This article blends the authors' experience, dependent on other stories and vulnerability, which together over time becomes a genealogy. For analytical purposes, this article divides the history of the transfeminist movement into two periods: the emergence and consolidation of the trans-depathologization movement (2006–10) and the consolidation of the transfeminist movement (2010–13).

The Author File: Jason W. Chin.

How to combine biology, chemistry and synthetic biology to add synthetic amino acids to a protein, and why creativity matters.

Advertising to businesses: Does creativity matter?

Business-to-business advertising research has long been grounded in rationality with a focus on factual, functional, benefit-laden messages. However, in consumer advertising, psychological differentiators, such creativity, are frequently used to increase advertising effectiveness. With growing evidence that consumer marketing concepts apply to business buyers, this research investigates the effect advertising creativity has on the organizational buying process. Using an online survey, we present actual advertisements to managers in the B2B environment. Our results provide strong evidence that message creativity influences business managers' response toward advertising for site selection. Creative ads generated stronger shifts in attitudes toward the ad, attitudes toward the brand, and behavioral intentions. The results extend previous research on the role of creativity in advertising to a business-to-business context. The results also challenge conventional wisdom and dominant practices in advertising to businesses.

The Importance of Domain-Specific Expertise in Creativity

Although creativity and expertise are related, they are nonetheless very different things. Expertise does not usually require creativity, but creativity generally does require a certain level of expertise. There are similarities in the relationships of both expertise and creativity to domains, however. Research has shown that just as expertise in one domain does not predict expertise in other, unrelated domains, creativity in one domain does not predict creativity in other, unrelated domains. People may be expert, and people may be creative, in many domains, or they may be expert, or creative, in few domains or none at all, and one cannot simply transfer expertise, or creativity, from one domain to another, unrelated domain. The domain specificity of creativity matters crucially for creativity training, creativity assessment, creativity research, and creativity theory. The domain specificity of creativity also means that interdisciplinary thinking, interdisciplinary collaboration, and interdisciplinary creativity are even more important than one would assume if creativity were domain general.

The collective creativity of academics and practitioners in innovation projects

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to explore the adequacy of the common individual creativity vs organizatonal innovation dichotomy in a complex real-life context.Design/methodology/approach– The paper is based on a retrospective case study of a R&D project in a large industrial company.Findings– The paper shows that understanding the relationship between creativity and innovation as a matter of individual creativity followed by subsequent collective innovation, fails to account for the inherent collective, and improvisational nature of innovation projects. To deal with this weakness, the paper proposes a reconceptualization of the relationship in terms of a capacity/activity distinction which views creativity as an individual and collective integral part of the complex innovation activity.Research limitations/implications– This paper does not discuss challenges regarding collaboration between people representing a variety of expertise, interests, and organizational belongings.Practical implications– The paper points out that continuous collective creativity is more important than initial individual creativity in complex real-life projects. The paper provides specific examples of work forms and approaches encouraging the collective creativity of researchers and practitioners in an innovation project. The work forms and approaches show how people continually deal with complexity, uncertainty and “the unexpected.” As such, the paper may be valuable to managers of complex real life-projects involving people with a great variety of expertise.Originality/value– The paper contributes to a reconceptualization of the relationship between creativity and innovation which forms a contrast to the most common ways to distinquish between the phenomena. The capacity/activity distinction reflects the common assumption of a close relationship between creativity and innovation, but does not restrict creativity to the individual level or initial stage of innovation projects only. As such, the reconceptualization of the relationship between creativity and innovation can form the basis for practice-based theories in project management.

Baptism by fire: did the creative class generate economic growth during the crisis?

Scholars have long argued that creativity drives economic prosperity. Recently, much of this debate has revolved around the creative class. Most of this research, however, has been done during times of strong economic growth. What is the economic effect of the creative class after the financial crisis? Looking at regional unemployment variation in 2007–2011 against baseline unemployment in 2005, we study if specific subgroups within the creative class have different relationships with regional unemployment. Throughout the entire timeframe all of the creative subgroups are associated with lower unemployment. We conclude that creativity matters but the influence of each subsector is dependent on region size. Copyright 2012, Oxford University Press.

An Exploration of Accountants, Accounting Work, and Creativity

ABSTRACT: In two studies, we explore whether creativity is essential—or antithetical—to professional accounting work. In Study 1, archival analysis of U.S. Department of Labor data indicates that: (1) professional accounting work requires no less creativity than do three competing professions and a diverse sample of U.S. occupations, and (2) greater creativity may be required in financial than in auditing and taxation accounting work. In Study 2, a survey contrasts the self-assessed and number-of-uses creativity of governmental accounting professionals and Master’s of Accountancy (M.Acc.) students with that of M.B.A. students. Results indicate lower creativity among accountants and M.Acc. students compared with M.B.A. students, and no systematic relationship between ethics and creativity. We conclude that while creativity matters to accounting work—more to some areas of accounting practice than others—accountancy education and work may attract or reward entrants with less than desirable levels of creativity, perhaps due to the common belief that creativity is unneeded in, or even deleterious to, professional accountancy work.

The Vital Role of Problem-Solving Competence in New Product Success*

Problem solving, a process of seeking, defining, evaluating, and implementing the solutions, is considered a converter that can translate organizational inputs into valuable product and service outputs. A key challenge for the product innovation community is to answer questions about how knowledge competence and problem-solving competence develop and sustain competitive advantage. The objective of this study is to theoretically examine and empirically test an existing assumption that problem-solving competence is an important variable connecting market knowledge competence with new product performance. New product projects from 396 firms in the high-technology zones in China were used to test the study's theoretical model. The results first indicate that problem-solving speed and creativity matter in new product innovation performance by playing mediator roles between market knowledge competence and positional advantage, which in turn sustains superior performance. This new insight suggest that mere generation of market knowledge and having a marketing–research and development (R&D) interface will not affect new product performance unless project members have the ability to use the information and to interact to identify and solve complex problems speedily and creatively. Second, these results suggest that different market knowledge competences (customers, competitors, and interactions between marketing and R&D) have distinct impacts on problem-solving speed and creativity (positive, negative, or none), which underscore the need to embrace a more fine-grained notion of market knowledge competence. The results also reveal that the relative importance of some of these relationships depends on the perceived level of turbulence in the environment. First, competitor knowledge competence decreases problem-solving speed when perceived environmental turbulence is low but enhances problem-solving speed when perceived turbulence is high. Second, competitor knowledge competence has a positive relationship with new product performance when the environmental turbulence is high but no relationship when the environmental turbulence is low. Third, the positive relationship between problem-solving speed and product advantage is stronger when the perceived environmental turbulence is high than when it is low, which implies that problem solving is more important for creating product advantage when environmental turbulence is high and change is fast and unpredictable. Fourth, the negative relationship between problem-solving speed and new product performance is stronger when the perceived environmental turbulence is high than when it is low, which means that problem-solving speed is more harmful for new product performance when change is fast and unpredictable. And fifth, the positive relationship between product quality and new product performance is stronger when perceived environmental turbulence is low than when it is high, which implies that product quality may more likely lead to new product performance when the environment is stable and changes are easy to predict, analyze, and comprehend.

Ethics and Animal Welfare Related to in vivo Pharmacology and Toxicology in Laboratory Animals

Ethics and Animal Welfare Related to <i>in vivo</i> Pharmacology and Toxicology in Laboratory Animals

Leibniz on Infinite Number, Infinite Wholes, and the Whole World

R eductio arguments are notoriously inconclusive, a fact which no doubt con­ tributes to their great fecundity. For once a contradiction has been proved, it is open to interpretation which premise should be given up. Indeed. it is often a matter of great creativity to identify what can be consistently given up. A case in point is a traditional paradox of the infinite provided by Galileo Galilei in his Two New Sciences, which has since come to be known as Galileo's Paradox. It con­ cerns the set of (natural) numbers, N: since to every number there is a corre­ sponding square, there are as many squares as numbers. But since there are non­ squares between the squares (2, 3, 5 etc.), all numbers, comprising the squares and the non-squares, are greater than the squares alone (EN 78)2 , i.e. there must be fewer numbers in the set of squares S than in N. Thus N is both equal to and greater than S. This is a contradiction, so one of the premises must be given up: the question is, which one? In his consideration of the paradox in 1676, Gottfried Leibniz concluded: Hence it follows that in the infinite the whole is not greater than the part, which is the opinion of Galileo and Gregory of St. Vincent, and which I can­ not accept; or that infinity itself is nothing, i.e. that it is not one and not a whole.3

Streamlining outpatient cisplatin therapy to meet the challenges of today

Increasing numbers of patients are receiving full courses of cisplatin therapy in such outpatient settings as clinics, offices, day hospitals, or home. Outpatient cisplatin therapy is administered safely and effectively in the ambulatory environment. Outpatient therapy is about one third the cost of inpatient therapy and offers the patient significant benefits in terms of work, illness perception, tolerance of side effects, and family strain. As more patients receive cisplatin on an outpatient basis, it is imperative that new strategies be developed to help streamline care to accommodate the growing number of outpatients. This article reviews methods used in a variety of settings to provide quality care to larger numbers of patients. A critical factor to consider when developing new care methods is how to maintain the fine balance between efficient, effective, economical, and quality care. Keeping that balance may necessitate a lot of trials and false starts. Developing a comfortable environment for cisplatin infusion is a matter of creativity. It is not necessary to spend large sums of money to create an acceptable setting. Flow sheets, standardized teaching protocols, patient information guides, patient diaries, and standardized hydration, antiemetic, and therapy protocols are just a few of the approaches that have been used to streamline care. Becoming involved in oncology nurse groups, networks, or continuing education programs are excellent avenues to meeting people who are all working on methods to streamline and provide quality care. The three elements of a successful outpatient program for the administration of cisplatin include having a comfortable setting, a well-organized, experienced staff, and appropriate patient selection. Patients are an excellent source of ideas for improving the care that they receive. A questionnaire or focus session with patients and families may yield valuable insights for improving care. The challenges of health care today will hopefully be met with methods that greatly benefit the patient.

The Flash of Genius.

This book with the flashy title and the explosive dust cover consists of an effort on the part of A. B. Garrett to set forth what he conceives to be the major discoveries of the modern world. Insofar as it is possible to find and analyze those forces which have led to discovery, he aims to do so. Hardly any aspect of psychological and intellectual study defies critical and satisfying analysis more obdurately than does the elusive matter of inspiration, creativity, and discovery. What is it that impels, excites, or makes luminous those creative people who can see a new truth which everyone suddenly recognizes as having been all too self-evident? In fact they decry it as already known or unimportant and, after a while as old. What is it that ignites the flame of inspiration in a poet, a dramatist, or a novelist? What enables the creative artist to