Selection Of Creative Ideas Research Articles

Which Idea to Pursue? Gender Differences in Novelty Avoidance During Creative Idea Selection

Despite women having made significant progress in the modern workforce, gender gaps are still evident in creative work. In this paper, we propose that, although women and men are equally capable of generating creative ideas, gender differences emerge during the idea-selection stage. Specifically, compared with men, women engage in higher novelty avoidance during idea selection—the degree to which one selects an idea that is less novel than the most novel idea one has generated. In two laboratory studies and a field survey involving creative professionals, we found significant gender differences in novelty avoidance during idea selection and identified women’s concerns about social backlash when pursuing highly novel ideas as one explanatory variable. We also experimentally manipulated gender compositions of the evaluation panel and found that women’s novelty avoidance tendency during idea selection was reduced when they were informed about the presence of women evaluators. Finally, novelty avoidance during idea selection has an inverted U-shaped relationship with idea success; because women tend to engage in higher novelty avoidance than men, novelty avoidance in women (but not men) has a negative impact on the success of their ideas. By examining gender dynamics at specific stages, our work offers theoretical and practical insights regarding gender disparities in creative work. Funding: M. Jin extends appreciation to the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72202003, 72091314, 72172006] for financial support. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the Singapore Ministry of Education’s Social Science Research Thematic Grant [Grant MOE2017-SSRTG-042]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.16176 .

Discerning creativity: a group process perspective on idea selection

ABSTRACT Groups struggle to identify creative ideas, often gravitating towards more mediocre ideas even when better ideas (i.e., ideas that are more novel and useful) are available for selection. While this issue has been well-documented, how to overcome the problem is not yet well-understood. In this essay, we advocate for the utility of using structured processes to aid groups in selecting more creative ideas and offer one example of such a structured process that practitioners can use to improve the odds of groups finding those ‘diamonds-in-the-rough’. The process is theoretically grounded and designed to overcome the very obstacles that have been suggested by previous research to impede the selection of creative ideas in groups. Our six-step process is easily implementable and applicable in a variety of contexts in which selection bodies have to make decisions under uncertainty.

Sticky tradition impedes selection of creative ideas.

Creativity is a driving force for human development and has fascinated scholars for centuries. Surprisingly little is known about the cognitive underpinnings of putting creative ideas into action, however. To shed light on this part of the creative process, we tracked how hand movements unfolded when choosing between either a traditional or a creative use of a given object. Participants could freely decide between both options (Experiment 1, N = 51 adults) or were prompted to select a specific use (Experiment 2, N = 51 adults). Temporal as well as spatial measures of action unfolding revealed behavior to be strongly biased toward traditional options when choosing an available, more creative option eventually. Creative behavior thus comprises two obstacles: not only coming up with new ideas, but also overcoming a lasting bias toward using old ones. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The Evaluation and Selection of Creative Ideas in Educational Settings: Current Knowledge and Future Directions

ABSTRACT Worldwide, student-centered pedagogies have emerged in education to develop creativity. However, these pedagogies do not automatically enhance students’ creativity, because students tend to underestimate and reject creative ideas – even when highly novel ideas are required to solve the problem at hand. Understanding how students evaluate and select ideas is crucial for enhancing creativity. Therefore, this paper reviews research on idea evaluation and idea selection among students. This paper suggests that the evaluation of ideas depends both on specific and general components, and a mild state of affect and openness to experience seems to play a significant role. To improve idea evaluation and idea selection, students should be exposed to a variety of ideas and effective instructional strategies benefit students as well. Teachers should explicitly instruct students to select creative ideas and encourage them to simultaneously generate and refine ideas. However, instructing students to transform their creative ideas into tangible products may unintentionally influence their choices for creative ideas. Balancing novelty and usefulness pose challenges for students during evaluation and selection, and teachers should attune to students’ reactions as much as possible (e.g. accommodating emotional outbursts). Finally, several future trends and important research questions are highlighted.

Instructing children to construct ideas into products alters children's creative idea selection in a randomized field experiment.

Many popular pedagogical approaches instruct children to construct their ideas into tangible and physical products. With the prospect of implementation, do children decide to go for the most creative ideas or do they shift towards ideas that are perhaps less creative but easier to construct? We conducted a field experiment to test whether expected construction affects children's creative idea selection. In this experiment, 403 children were asked to select the most original ideas to make a toy elephant more fun to play with. We randomly assigned them to a treatment condition-in which they were informed they had to construct one of the original ideas that they selected-and a control group-in which children were informed that, after idea selection, they had to perform another task. Children who were instructed to construct the selected idea into a tangible product turned a blind eye to original ideas and preferred the more feasible ideas. Thus, pedagogical approaches that aim to stimulate creativity by instructing children to construct original ideas into tangible and physical products may unintentionally change children's choices for creative ideas. This finding highlights the importance for educators of guiding children's decision-making process in creative problem solving, and to be aware of children's bias against original ideas when designing creative assignments for them.

Group creativity in the wild: When building on ideas enhances the generation and selection of creative ideas

Long‐standing wisdom holds that building on ideas is beneficial for group creativity. We empirically verify this recommended practice. We analyse creativity sessions of nine groups of professionals tasked to synthesize new ideas into one final creative concept. Linkography and quantitative analysis are used for analysing the impact of building on ideas on group creativity. First, the results indicate that building on ideas does not lead to more novel, feasible, or useful ideas. Second, our study shows that building on ideas is beneficial only if the ideators build upon the “right” ideas. Ideators generate more novel ideas only when they build on novel ideas. Moreover, our research reveals a trade‐off: Building on novel ideas leads to more novel but less feasible ideas while building on familiar ideas leads to less novel but more feasible ideas. Finally, we find that stimulus ideas (i.e., ideas that are built upon) are more likely to be selected and integrated into the final concept. Taken together, our results indicate that building on novel ideas enhances the generation and selection processes. Implications for theory and research on creativity in organizations are discussed.

Evaluation and selection of creative ideas in organizations

Creativity scholars suggest that innovation involves idea generation, idea evaluation and selection, and finally, idea implementation. Yet, until recently, creativity research has mostly focused on idea generation. While work on idea generation has provided influential insights, it paints an incomplete picture of innovation in organizations. This is because only a small subset of the generated ideas ever reach the implementation stage, and numerous types of biases can hinder the identification of the best ideas. The purpose of this symposium is to discuss new theory and research on the evaluation and selection of creative ideas in organizations. The papers in this symposium highlight different biases in the evaluation process and how they could be mitigated. The compound of the papers provides a comprehensive view of the evaluation and selection of creative ideas at multiple levels of analysis (i.e., individual, dyadic, group), with a variety of methods (i.e., grounded theory, laboratory experiments, archival study), and across a range of contexts (e.g., internal idea selection panels, leader-member creative collaborations, and crowdfunding platforms). How Preference Diversity Amplifies Uncertainty and Reduces Group Preference for Novel Ideas Presenter: Wenxin Xie; U. College London Presenter: Sarah Harvey; UCL School of Management Presenter: Haoyue Zhang; Washington U. in St. Louis, Olin Business School Presenter: Poornika Anantha Ramakrishnan; Rotterdam School of Mgmt Presenter: William Bottom; Washington U. in St. Louis Expand Your Scope to Engage the Tension: How Leaders Overcome a Bias against Novelty Presenter: Jennifer Mueller; U. of San Diego Presenter: Yidan Yin; U. of California, San Diego Presenter: Mathias Simmons; U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences Evil Genius? How Unethical Pro-Organizational Behavior Impacts Creativity Recognition Presenter: Qing Gong; Georgia Institute of Technology Presenter: Jiani Zhu; Georgia Institute of Technology Presenter: Christina Shalley; Georgia Institute of Technology Stereotyped as a Creative: Cues of Unconventionality Bias Idea Evaluation Presenter: Jack Anthony Goncalo; U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Presenter: Ozias Moore; Lehigh U. The Effect of Geographical Discrimination on Investment Decisions Presenter: Xingye Liang; Vrije U. Amsterdam Presenter: Markus Baer; Washington U. in St. Louis Presenter: Jung Hyun Lee; Washington U. in St. Louis, Olin Business School

The effect of rank‐ordering strategy on creative idea selection performance

AbstractWhen people have to choose a creative solution from several ideas to tackle a problem, they tend to select mainstream ideas at the expense of creative ideas. In the current research, we examined the effect of rank‐ordering strategy on creative idea selection performance by comparing three different rank‐ordering strategies: choosing (i.e., rank‐ordering ideas by stepwise selecting the most creative idea), elimination (i.e., rank‐ordering ideas by stepwise removing the least creative idea), and paired comparison (i.e., rank‐ordering ideas by making a series of choices from pairs of ideas). In four experiments, participants rank‐ordered 10 ideas in creativity by using one of the three strategies, and the creativity of the most creative idea was compared between the conditions. Moreover, a meta‐analysis was conducted on the data of these four studies. Our findings suggest that rank‐ordering strategy does not influence creative idea selection performance and Bayesian analyses provide evidence supporting the null hypothesis.

Metacognitive feelings as a source of information in the evaluation and selection of creative ideas

In two studies, we examined the interaction between different cognitive and metacognitive indicators coming from the acts of generating, evaluating and selecting ideas, putting special emphasis on metacognitive feelings. In addition, we examined experiential thinking style and creative potential as antecedents of metacognitive feelings. Participants in study 1 completed a battery of questionnaires including an ill-defined marketing problem. Results showed a positive relationship between experiential thinking style and metacognitive feelings. Metacognitive feelings had a positive relationship with an indicator of overestimation of the creativity of ideas, which then a negative relationship with accurate idea selection. Creative potential had a negative relationship with an indicator of overestimation of the creativity of ideas. We conducted a conceptual replication in study 2. Participants completed a battery of questionnaires including an ill-defined social problem. Results showed positive relationships between metacognitive feelings and originality scores and relevance of strengths and weaknesses identified in the ideas generated. Relevance of strengths and weakness had then a positive relationship with accurate idea selection. Our findings showed that metacognitive feelings informed two forms of idea evaluation. The implications of our results were discussed.

Evaluation and Selection of Creative Ideas in Organizations

Evaluation and Selection of Creative Ideas in Organizations

Why Do Great Creative Ideas Get Rejected?

ABSTRACT One of the most contentious issues in advertising is the evaluation and selection of creative ideas. This selection process is central to the success of agencies and clients, yet it appears difficult for external observers to see the merits of highly creative ideas. To understand this issue, the authors compared self-reports of creative ideas from industry professionals with those of external judges. Results suggest that the difficulty in the external evaluation of creative ideas is not recognizing originality but recognizing appropriateness when the idea is also highly original. Creative ideas do not speak for themselves; presentation is crucial.

Strategies to improve selection of creative ideas: An experimental test of epistemic and social motivation in groups

Pre‐implementation activities like idea selection play a crucial role in the innovation process. However, groups of people seem to perform rather poorly when it comes to selecting creative ideas for implementation. The Motivated Information Processing in Groups model (MIP‐G) provides an explanation as to why some groups outperform others when it comes to making group decisions. On the basis of the MIP‐G framework, we hypothesized that groups that are both epistemically and prosocially motivated would outperform other groups in selecting creative ideas. Contrary to our hypothesis, a 2 × 2 experiment in a field sample (N = 240 or 80 three‐person groups) showed that under conditions of high epistemic motivation, proself motivated groups selected significantly more creative and original ideas than prosocial groups. Proself motivated groups did not differ significantly from the prosocial motivated groups in selecting feasible ideas under conditions of high epistemic motivation. Our results suggest that the MIP‐G framework may need refinement to increase our future understanding of group idea selection. To this end, we propose three specific avenues for future research.

Building Learning Path of Mathematical Creative Thinking of Junior Students on Geometry Topics by Implementing Metacognitive Approach

Mathematical creative ability is one of the most important skills students must have to process the information provided in resolving the problem. Before using mathematical creative skills, prior knowledge becomes the most crucial thing that allows students to connect all existing information so that they can construct new knowledge through assimilation or accommodation processes. The process of forming mathematical concepts with metacognitive questions that might be carried out by students causes a metacognitive process in students that will affect their mathematical behavior. 
 The purpose of this study is to (1) analyze prior knowledge of what students miss or forget so that they have difficulty to answer the given geometry problem, (2) how the learning path of creative thinking of students with the application of metacognitive approach. This type of research is Design Research to improve the quality of learning. This type of research is research design, data collection techniques .The researcher gave 2 geometry questions to 38 8th graders selected randomly in SMP Medan city. Questions given are tailored to Cognitive level 4 (C4) for questions 1 and C5 for question 2 based on Bloom's taxonomy. Data analysis techniques are descriptive qualitative.This study shows that prior knowledge becomes important to build students' mathematical creative ability to gain new knowledge, especially in the field of geometry. The most problematic topics that make it difficult for them to understand geometry are the area of the rectangle and the cube webs. In dividing the rectangle into two equal parts, students still have not created another form of flat build or have not been able to get out of the rectangular pattern or exactly the same as the available problem.
 There are five phases of learning trajectory of hierarchically creative mathematical thinking, which is orientation to problem, problem solving plan, plan realization, previous knowledge mastery / concept of mathematical creativity and evaluation of result obtained. Students do metacognition on the learning path of creative thinking in a comprehensive way from evaluation to planning, action to the formation of prior knowledge and selection of creative ideas. From these explanations, it is important that teachers need to ensure students have enough prior knowledge to make it easier to construct new knowledge, as well as to make learning fun and meaningful so that students will remember knowledge in long-term memory.

Creativity: Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Selection of Creative Ideas

AbstractCreative idea selection—the selection of the most creative idea(s) from available ideas—is an important yet understudied topic. Creative idea selection can be performed by the idea generator (i.e., intrapersonal selection) or by another person (i.e., interpersonal selection). In the current research, we examined whether these two types of selection lead to different levels of performance. Participants generated six creative ideas to solve a societal problem. Thereafter, two selection tasks—intrapersonal selection and interpersonal selection—were performed. During intrapersonal selection, the idea generator selected the most creative idea from his/her own ideas; during interpersonal selection, another person made the selection from the same ideas. We found no effect of intrapersonal and interpersonal selection on creative idea selection performance: People selected ideas of identical creativity, irrespective of whether that idea was from themselves or from others. Moreover, we replicated the earlier finding that people perform suboptimally at creative idea selection, failing to select ideas that were more creative than an average idea, for both intrapersonal and interpersonal selection.

THE USE OF THE “DESIGN-THINKING” AND “SEVEN HATS” METHODSAT THE PROJECT INITIATION AND PLANNING STAGE

The article is devoted to the comparison of tools for analyzing innovative ideas, such as “design thinking” and the modified “seven hats” method. Both methods are actively used in project management at the initiation and planning stages. Thetechnology of generation, analysis and selection of creative ideas of projects based on the combination of these two approaches when working in a team is considered. The article is a continuation of the authors' research in the field of creative thinking prob-lems, both in the field of education, and in the field of professional project and program management. The results can be used to develop a theoretical framework for project management at the stage of generating ideas and initiating projects.The logic of the process approach of the design-thinking method echoes the logic of using the modified seven hats method. Therefore, the authors propose to use in the work of project teams at the stage of project initiation a modified “seven hats”method together with the “design-thinking” method. At the stageof consideration of the project idea, it is proposed to approach the devel-opment of the idea step by step, since this is required by the “design-thinking” method, and at each stage all team members wear the same “hats”. The paper presents the methodology obtained by directly transferring the methods and tools proposed for the “seven hats” method in the logic of their consistent use in conjunction with the “design thinking” technique. A table has been developed for the correspondence of the stages of creating a project idea using the “design thinking” and “seven hats” approaches, for example, the “green hat” is assigned to the “generating ideas” stage, and the “blue”, “white” and “black” hats to the “prototype testing” phase. Developing the ideas of Edward de Bono, it becomes possible not only to effectively generate ideas at the stage of project initiation, but also to develop prototypes that have the value the customer needs. Namely, this is the result of a successfulproject activity.

Creativity: Intuitive processing outperforms deliberative processing in creative idea selection

Creative ideas are highly valued, and various techniques have been designed to maximize the generation of creative ideas. However, for actual implementation of creative ideas, the most creative ideas must be recognized and selected from a pool of ideas. Although idea generation and idea selection are tightly linked in creativity theories, research on idea selection lags far behind research on idea generation. The current research investigates the role of processing mode in creative idea selection. In two experiments, participants were either instructed to intuitively or deliberatively select the most creative ideas from a pool of 18 ideas that systematically vary on creativity and its sub-dimensions originality and usefulness. Participants in the intuitive condition selected ideas that were more creative, more original, and equally useful than the ideas selected by participants in the deliberative condition. Moreover, whereas selection performance of participants in the deliberative condition was not better than chance level, participants in the intuitive condition selected ideas that were more creative, more original, and more useful than the average of all available ideas.

Using Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation to Enhance Creative Cognition: Interactions between Task, Polarity, and Stimulation Site.

Creative cognition is frequently described as involving two primary processes, idea generation and idea selection. A growing body of research has used transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to examine the neural mechanisms implicated in each of these processes. This literature has yielded a diverse set of findings that vary depending on the location and type (anodal, cathodal, or both) of electrical stimulation employed, as well as the task’s reliance on idea generation or idea selection. As a result, understanding the interactions between stimulation site, polarity and task demands is required to evaluate the potential of tDCS to enhance creative performance. Here, we review tDCS designs that have elicited reliable and dissociable enhancements for creative cognition. Cathodal stimulation over the left inferior frontotemporal cortex has been associated with improvements on tasks that rely primarily on idea generation, whereas anodal tDCS over left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and frontopolar cortex has been shown to augment performance on tasks that impose high demands on creative idea selection. These results highlight the functional selectivity of tDCS for different components of creative thinking and confirm the dissociable contributions of left dorsal and inferior lateral frontotemporal cortex for different creativity tasks. We discuss promising avenues for future research that can advance our understanding of the effectiveness of tDCS as a method to enhance creative cognition.

Facilitating Creative Idea Selection: The Combined Effects of Self-Affirmation, Promotion Focus and Positive Affect

Generating creative ideas in a brainstorm session `is a crucial part of innovation. However, for actual implementation, the most creative ideas must be selected from a pool of ideas. To date, idea selection has remained relatively unexplored and validated instruments to measure idea selection performance are not systematically employed. This study aimed to improve creative idea selection performance in a field study. In this study, an idea pool of 18 ideas was used, and participants had to select the 5 most creative ideas from the idea pool. Right before participants performed the idea selection task, in the experimental condition, a promotion focus and positive affect was induced in combination with a self-affirmation task. Participants in the control condition performed corresponding filler tasks. The selection of the 5 most creative ideas from the idea pool of 18 ideas was performed individually. Participants in the experimental condition selected ideas that were more creative than did participants in the control condition. These findings provide first evidence that the selection of creative ideas can be enhanced through a combined induction of promotion-focus, positive mood and self-affirmation.

Effects of Problem Scope and Creativity Instructions on Idea Generation and Selection

The basic assumption of brainstorming is that increased quantity of ideas results in increased generation as well as selection of creative ideas. Although previous research suggests that idea quantity correlates strongly with the number of good ideas generated, quantity has been found to be unrelated to the quality of selected ideas. This article reports the results of a brainstorming experiment aimed at increasing the average creativity of ideas and creative idea selection (rather than idea quantity). Problem scope (narrow vs. broad) and creativity instructions (emphasis on creativity vs. personal relevance) were manipulated. Results show that both narrow (vs. broad) problems and creativity (vs. relevance) instructions led to the generation of ideas that were more creative. However, only under creativity instructions did participants select more creative ideas.

Team Selection of Creative Ideas and its Implications for Team Creativity

Current theories of how team creativity emerges do not convincingly explain practices whereby creative ideas are selected. We consider idea selection as a critical mechanism, which significantly impacts team’s creativity. We propose that idea selection may provide an effective alternative to the two well-known creativity phases on which the extent literature has focused (i.e. idea generation and idea implementation phases), particularly to solve the current puzzles in the literature on idea diversity and team cognitive diversity. We specify four archetypes of team selection of creative ideas and the environmental conditions that affect such team selection modes. We elaborate implications of such selection strategies for the team creative outcomes and creativity theory.