Individual Creativity during the Ideation Phase of Product Innovation: An Interactional Perspective

Abstract

Although there is increasing acknowledgement that employees' creative ideas are fundamental for product innovation, and many companies use cross‐functional teams to increase employee creativity, there has been little empirical testing of how individual personality and group context interactively affect individual creativity. The purpose of this study is threefold: to examine the relationship between personality and individual creativity; to assess how this relationship interacts with group diversity; and to determine whether the interaction effects between personality traits and gender diversity are mediated by individual knowledge sharing. The results of an experiment based on a sample of 142 working adults show that openness to experience and extraversion are positively related to individual creativity, whereas neuroticism and conscientiousness are negatively related to individual creativity. Furthermore, the impacts of openness to experience and extraversion on individual creativity, respectively, are moderated by both functional diversity and gender diversity. In addition, these interaction effects are mediated by individual knowledge sharing. Interestingly, this study also finds that the direction of functional diversity's moderating effects depends on the level of group diversity.

Exploring Creative Entrepreneurs’ IEO: Extraversion, Neuroticism and Creativity

“…However, at present, scholars have different opinions on the influence of neuroticism on creativity. For instance, some studies found a negative association between neuroticism and creativity ( Guo et al, 2017 ). In contrast, others have found that self-rated creativity is positively related to neuroticism ( Batey et al, 2010 ).…”

“…In addition, Srivastava and Ketter (2010) , through meta-analysis, found that neurotic creative business professionals are more creative than non-neurotic business professionals. Some scholars claim that emotionally stable individuals with low neuroticism are relatively relaxed and have a positive view of the tasks of themselves and others ( Guo et al, 2017 ). Creativity requires the ability to effectively integrate information and seek a new way of thinking, which can be enhanced by a calm attitude and self-confidence.…”

Teaching and Implementing Ideation in Entrepreneurship: A Systematic Approach

“…The first one is informational diversity which refers to differences in characteristics such as educational background and functional experience and is related to the kind of concrete information each member brings to the team. Social category diversity refers to demographic differences such as gender, age and tenure among the members of the team (Guo, et al, 2017). Informational diversity in teams is less visible and more task-related than social category diversity.…”

Attention! Cosmopolitans ahead – They may not be as creative as they think!

“…Early creativity research focused on personality traits as predictors of creative outcomes. Further work on creativity has continued to examine personality traits, finding significant and positive relationships between the Big‐Five personality factors of openness to experience, extraversion and conscientiousness, and creative output (Cirella, ; Gassmann, ; George & Zhou, ; Guo, Su, & Zhang, ; Perkins, Lean, & Newbery, ; Shalley, ; Sung & Choi, ). On a different track, creativity researchers separately began to focus on cognitive styles to explore the impact on creative behaviour.…”