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Abstract
We investigate the effectiveness of three types of IT-enabled cognitive stimulation tools for enhancing creative problem solving: mind mappers, process guides, and stimuli providers. Based on the dual pathway to creativity models, the authors examine the extent to which these tools are capable of stimulating individuals to explore their knowledge base more deeply (i.e., the persistence pathway) and more broadly (i.e., the flexibility pathway) and, hence, help to produce more novel ideas. In a laboratory study with business students, they find that, as compared to unaided individuals, IT-enabled stimuli providers enhance individual creativity more than process guides and mind mappers. As for the underlying creative process, stimuli providers push individuals to explore their knowledge base more deeply and more broadly, leading to more novel but, unexpectedly, also more useful ideas. The reported findings may facilitate the development of creativity support systems and their assignment to individuals and tasks.
Notes
1. In a postexperimental survey, we asked participants to respond to the following statement: “I made great efforts to increase my chances to earn 30 euros” (scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). There were no significant differences across conditions (F(3, 139) = 1.1, p = .36).
2. All ideas generated by the participant were saved in a document. This list of ideas provides insight into the idea generation process. More specifically, it allows for an assessment of the depth and breadth of the participant’s exploration of his or her knowledge base.
3. To check the extent to which novelty and usefulness play a role in expert judgments of the overall creativity of the generated ideas, we regressed the average creativity scores on the average novelty and average usefulness scores. Together these two variables explained 91.5 percent of the variance in the average creativity scores, with usefulness (b = 0.7, t = 23.1, p < .01) receiving slightly more weight than novelty (b = 0.4, t = 14.8, p < .01). The correlation coefficient between the average novelty scores and the average usefulness scores was .52 (p < .01).
4. The average highest depth of exploration within a single category was 3.4 (SD = 1.57).
5. In the “no IT-enabled cognitive stimulation tool” control condition, the average novelty, usefulness, and overall creativity scores of the generated ideas are all, rounded-off, at the scales’ midpoint of 5.5. Hence, we considered ideas with scores higher than 5.5 as “above average.”
6. Because the number of generated ideas is highly correlated with the depth and breadth of exploration (see ), we conducted separate mediation analyses: (1) with average depth (persistence) and breadth (flexibility) both as mediators, and (2) with the total number of generated ideas (fluency) as the single mediator.
7. The indirect effects for the three tools are similar when highest depth is used in the mediation analyses or when the number of creative ideas is used as the dependent variable. We note that the positive effect of the stimuli provider on the number of creative ideas (B = 4.9, p < .01; see ) is reduced but remains significant when average depth and breadth are included in the regression analysis (B = 2.3, p < .01), suggesting partial mediation of the effect of the stimuli provider [Citation80], while the effect of the process guide on the number of creative ideas (B = 2.6, p = .02; see ) is no longer significant at the 5 percent level (B = 1.1, p = .08).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Niek Althuizen
Niek Althuizen ([email protected]) is associate professor in the Department of Marketing, ESSEC Business School, Paris. He holds a master’s degree in agricultural economics from Wageningen University (Netherlands) and a Ph.D. in marketing from the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. His research focuses on decision making and decision support, with a special interest in creativity. His work has been published in the Journal of Management Information Systems, Decision Support Systems, American Sociological Review, Creativity Research Journal, Marketing Letters, and Psychology and Marketing.
Astrid Reichel
Astrid Reichel ([email protected]; corresponding author) is a full professor and head of the Human Resource Management Group at the University of Salzburg, Austria. She earned her Ph.D. in social and economic sciences from the University of Vienna, Austria. Her research focuses on micro-aspects of human resources management (HRM), especially on building creativity-fostering environments for employees in organizations and on macro-questions of HRM, such as power and organization of HR departments. Her articles have been published in Decision Support Systems, Human Resource Management, HRM Review, and International Journal of HRM.
