Thinking and doing the same things faster and better is not enough; we need creativity. Fortunately, creativity is a skill you can learn. This course will examine when, why, and how we can be creative. It examines the cues that trigger us to consider being creative. It provides a road map of the creative process – the process of changing our perspectives – and the kinds of outcomes that result from creativity. It examines how we can go through the creative process more efficiently and more effectively by examining what is changing about our thinking and how we can make those changes. The end result is more flexible thinking that can be used to recognize and develop new opportunities.
Intrinsic Motivation: Interview with Michael Williamson
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Do curso por University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Creativity Toolkit I: Changing Perspectives
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
95 ratings
Curso 3 de 7 em Specialization Innovation: From Creativity to Entrepreneurship
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Module 4: The Creative Journey
In this module, you will learn that creativity can be joyful, intrinsically motivating, and even liberating. You will also learn how to manage your organization so that your employees find ways to persist through the process as well.
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Jeffrey LoewensteinAssociate Professor of Organizational Behavior
Department of Business Administration
Jack GoncaloProfessor
Department of Business Administration
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Right, so we learned a little bit about intrinsic motivation and creativity.
And the story is basically that creativity comes from doing things that you love and
that you're passionate about.
And when you're doing work that you truly enjoy,
then you're more likely to persist and explore alternatives.
But that's not the only perspective, is there?
You actually have some work that might argue against
the idea that intrinsic motivation is really necessary.
>> Absolutely. Well,
I'm not going to argue that intrinsic motivation isn't necessarily good.
But more of my research talks or addresses the notion that extrinsic
factors are necessarily bad for creativity.
because there's a view out there that creativity is solely driven by intrinsic
desires, and that extrinsic factors such as performance-based pay or
budgeting systems or these types of things are actually really bad for creativity.
But it's interesting.
You take this perspective and you look at what companies are doing,
and a lot of survey evidence suggests that organizations that depend
more on creativity, like new product development, new markets,
these types of things, actually rely on these extrinsic factors much
more intensely than do organizations that don't rely on creativity.
>> So is it possible there's a self-selection that
creative people are attracted to those kinds of incentives?
Or is it? >> Perhaps, but digging more deeply, it,
even more interestingly, if you look at what they're rewarded based off of,
it's not necessarily creativity.
So it's not like the people that get paid
to be creative are necessarily drawn to the organization.
>> Yeah.
>> In fact, looking at these same organizations and
looking at the performance metrics that they chose to evaluate and
reward employees, about four to 6% have explicit metrics of creativity and
innovation based on a survey done about a decade ago.
And so, it seems like extrinsic incentives are perhaps, at least
if you look at what organizations are doing, perhaps can help drive creativity.
But maybe not in the traditional way that you get what you measure and reward.
>> So how does it work, then?
So, how, if I were going to implement that sort of plan to use extrinsic incentives,
how would I go about doing that?
>> Yeah, well the jury's still out.
We've been doing a set of research studies that
try to examine what extrinsic incentives could do well, or
what some of these extrinsic motivators can do well to drive creativity.
>> Yeah.
>> And we've pretty much come up with two answers to that at this point.
One is, they can drive progress.
The one thing I do know is if you're not doing anything,
you're not going to be very creative.
And sometimes doing creative things is very difficult.
It can lock you up.
And so based on a series of studies that we've done,
we find that paying people just to create,
not necessarily worry about creativity, but just paying people to go forward.
>> Yeah.
>> Leads to a lot of productivity and
a lot of that output turns out to be creative.
>> Okay. >> Anything we do to reward them for
creativity doesn't necessarily make them any more creative.
In fact, it does not.
But it makes them a lot less productive.
It's almost like Stephen King.
I always attribute a quote to him to this series of results that we see is
anytime I try to be creative it constipates the whole process.
It just slows me completely down.
But it doesn't necessarily lead to better output.
>> Right, so part of the reasons it works is is productivity.
And if you give people the proper incentives, they do more work.
And we've talked a lot about how creativity isn't just easy
sort of flashes of insight that just happen incidentally.
>> Absolutely.
>> You actually have to put the work in.
And incentives, to the extent that they motivate effort,
can also lead to creativity.
>> Absolutely, and I think it has two major benefits from this perspective.
One is, if you're productive, if you feel like you're being productive on a task,
you're a lot more motivated to work on the task.
If you feel like you're not making much progress and
you're driving home from work, the last thing you want to think about is that
task that's got you stuck all day long.
And so, by feeling more productive on work, you're more excited about it.
You want to think about it a lot more.
And like you said, by thinking through things,
you start making connections between things much more easily.
>> Right. >> The other thing that it gives you is
a lot more things to think about.
And so, for example, if you're writing a paper,
you can write an introduction to a paper, or while you're writing any kind of paper.
If you're stuck, you don't have much to think about.
If you just free your mind and write, you have a lot of things to think about and
piece together and change in your mind when you're driving home.
Or those moments that, yeah,
you just have free time to think about what you are working on.
>> Yeah, and in fact- >> What I think is actually,
it's one of the findings that I really like from your work,
is this perverse consequence of incentivizing people to be creative.
Because it locks people up.
>> Yeah. >> And it sort of has the opposite effect.
>> Exactly, and then what we, this early research, and
we're still doing some followup experiments.
But what we find is if you pay people just to be productive, they might not
necessarily be more creative than people that we pay for creative immediately.
But when we bring them back for follow up studies, they actually give us much more
creative work on the task that they were working on than if we don't pay people for
performance, than if we pay people for creativity.
And so, it actually seems to,
just being productive can drive kind of future creative insights.
>> Yeah, and that actually fits other work I know of suggesting that, for example,
professors who are the most creative and
impactful also produce the most articles, right?
>> Absolutely. >> They sort of value being prolific.
>> Absolutely.
>> Just getting stuff out there.
>> Absolutely.
>> On the chance that something will be good, right?
>> Yeah, exactly.
And if you just free yourself up to not worry about hitting a home run article
every single time,
if you just kind of make progress on things, all of a sudden an article 30 and
article 45 can be combined together to this really nice insight.
Where, if you aren't producing those,
you wouldn't have that available in your mind to put together and piece together.
>> Great, well, thanks, Michael.
That's a really interesting, and I think useful, perspective.
And sort of fits with the theme that if you want to be creative you've gotta put
in the work, so- >> Absolutely.
>> Thank you. >> Thank you.
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