Reawakening creativity for business leaders: Removing obstacles

Abstract

Creativity is a key to business success, but teaching it is difficult. The authors argue that improving creativity may be a matter of removing barriers to creative thought. Using a course on creativity as a manipulation, the authors investigate measures related to divergent thinking and three such barriers: fear of failure, tolerance for ambiguity, and creative self-efficacy. Following the course, scores on these factors significantly improve, resulting in significant improvement in divergent thinking skills. Scores from a control group of similar students did not show a similar increase. The authors conclude that by focusing on addressing such barriers, we may be able to unleash the creative talents of students.

Keywords:

• Creativity
• creative self-efficacy
• divergent thinking
• fear of failure
• pedagogy
• tolerance for ambiguity