Involving mind, body, and friends: Management that engenders creativity

Based on the careful observation and interviews of employees at three companies, and supplemented by cases from the popular business press, a discovery approach is used to derive four management principles that engender creativity and innovation in organizations: (1) manage organizations so that their knowledge base is more diverse than what would occur naturally; (2) encourage employees to embrace a collaborative and non-complacent attitude towards work and the organization; (3) make it possible for organization members to engage in the quick testing of ideas and solutions as they emerge; (4) reward employee and supervisor behaviors that support these principles and punish resistance to their implementation. The principles work in companies even if creativity and innovation are not stated organizational objectives, and do not require large investments or disruptions to work processes to yield valuable results.     

The influence of leader regulatory focus on employee creativity

Brockner and Higgins (Brockner, J., Higgins, E. T. 2001. Regulatory focus theory: Implications for the study of emotions at work. Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, 86(1), 35–66.) suggest that a leader's behavior may be perceived as an organizational endorsement of promotion-focused or prevention-focused concerns and that this perception will influence employee behavior by eliciting a congruent state of regulatory focus. We tested this hypothesis using matched pairs of leaders and employees from a Chinese firm and found that employee creativity is positively associated with the promotion focus of the supervisor's behavior. Consequently, through their actions, promotion-focused leaders may increase the likelihood of entrepreneurial action in their firms by eliciting a promotion-focused state of eagerness from their employees.     

Design-without-make: challenging the conventional approach to teaching and learning in a design and technology classroom

The purpose of the study reported here was to investigate the use of a design-without-make unit as part of the design and technology curriculum with pupils aged 14. Three research questions drove the study: (a) What sort of designing do pupils do when they work collaboratively to design without having to make what they have designed? (b) What is the teachers’ attitude to design-without-make? (c) What is the pupils’ attitude to design-without-make? The study is a small pilot and data were collected using semi-structured interviews with a class teacher and two pupils and detailed scrutiny of five pupils’ design ideas developed during 6 lessons towards the end of an 18 lessons teaching sequence. Findings indicate that the teacher and pupils in this study responded favourably to design-without-make. The pupils’ designing was highly iterative, creative, involved making a wide range of design decisions and revealed understanding of technological concepts.     

教练型领导对员工创造力的影响：来自制造企业的实证分析

作为企业创新的不竭动力，员工创造力的价值日益凸显。针对制造企业，通过问卷调查法收集了373份员工调研数据，构建一个被中介的调节作用模型，探讨教练型领导对员工创造力的具体作用机制。结果发现：教练型领导能显著正向预测员工创造力；员工内在动机部分中介教练型领导对其创造力的积极影响；员工变革开放性在教练型领导影响其创造力的过程中发挥正向调节作用，且该调节作用部分通过员工内在动机进行中介传递。最后，提出相应管理启示，为制造企业人力资源管理实践提供决策参考。     

The locating of emotion within a creative, learning and product orientated design and technology experience: person, process, product

Within this paper, a conceptualised triadic schema is hypothesised for locating emotion within a creative, learning and product orientated Design and Technology experience. The research is based upon an extensive literature review that has been synthesised and juxtaposed with the broad aspirational aims of the subject. The schema, based upon abductive reasoning and grounded theory, ultimately conceptualises the overarching theme of emotion within a creative, learning and product orientated Design and Technology experience within the Primary and Secondary stages of England’s education system. The triadic schema offers an additional opportunity in meta-theorising how the broad aspirational aims of the subject, as outlined in the English national curriculum statement of importance for Design and Technology, can be achieved through recognising the powerful overarching concept of emotion within three emerging domains: Person, Process and Product. The central tenet of this paper is the recognition of emotion within a triadic schema for meta-theorising the place of emotion within a creative, learning and product orientated Design and Technology experience. David Spendlove was previously a senior teacher in secondary education before moving into Higher Education and is now the subject leader for Design and Technology at the University of Manchester. He co-edits both Design and Technology Education: An international Journal and the DATA international research conference proceedings. He is a director of the Design and Technology Association and his research interests are broadly based around learning, pedagogy, creativity, emotion and gender.     

新商品开发中的VE和创造性

价值工程所指的价值通常限定于“使用价值”,其使用价值又由功能价值和美学价值构成.以往价值工程主要围绕商品的功能价值的设计与改进而展开,本文拟在价值工程应用领域以美学价值为主的新商品开发方面作一些理论性的研究与探索.     

The wisdom of crowds: The potential of online communities as a tool for data analysis

Online communities have become an important source for knowledge and new ideas. This paper considers the potential of crowdsourcing as a tool for data analysis to address the increasing problems faced by companies in trying to deal with “Big Data”. By exposing the problem to a large number of participants proficient in different analytical techniques, crowd competitions can very quickly advance the technical frontier of what is possible using a given dataset. The empirical setting of the research is Kaggle, the world?s leading online platform for data analytics, which operates as a knowledge broker between companies aiming to outsource predictive modelling competitions and a network of over 100,000 data scientists that compete to produce the best solutions. The paper follows an exploratory case study design and focuses on the efforts by Dunnhumby, the consumer insight company behind the success of the Tesco Clubcard, to find and lever the enormous potential of the collective brain to predict shopper behaviour. By adopting a crowdsourcing approach to data analysis, Dunnhumby were able to extract information from their own data that was previously unavailable to them. Significantly, crowdsourcing effectively enabled Dunnhumby to experiment with over 2000 modelling approaches to their data rather than relying on the traditional internal biases within their R&D units.     

从消费者心理剖析体验式店面设计策略——以东京银座珠宝品牌店终端设计为例

随着经济形态的演变,社会经历了从产品经济时代、商品经济时代、服务经济时代,最终进入了全新的体验经济时代。步入体验经济和符号消费时代,消费已成为最热门的主题之一。本文以东京当代最为前沿的珠宝店的终端设计为例,从消费者心理角度,从店面、橱窗、装修、陈列、动线等等全方位地探讨了体验时代的终端设计策略。     

Dynamic capabilities,creativity and innovation capability and their impact on competitive advantage and firm performance: The moderating role of entrepreneurial orientation

Some scholars hold that dynamic capability (hereinafter DC) is one of the keys to achieving competitive advantage (hereinafter CA) and consequently, performance in strategic management. However, the definition and effects of DCs and the role of environmental dynamism are still under discussion. In the context of a Portuguese-like economy and from a strategic process perspective, this study defines dynamic capability as the potential to systematically solve problems, enabled by its propensity to sense opportunities and threats, to make timely decisions, and to implement strategic decisions and changes efficiently, thereby ensuring the right direction. Moreover, the ambidexterity view, exploring the indirect impact of exploitative and explorative capabilities, mediated by creativity and innovation competences (hereinafter IC) gives evidence of the influence on CA and firm's performance. Using an empirical study of 387 enterprises in Portugal, it was found that DCs, creativity and IC do significantly, positively, affect performance, while entrepreneurial orientation (hereinafter EO) is a moderator.     

Think intersectionally,act innovatively

Challenging business threats and opportunities abound, yet few Renaissance men/women exist to help organizations move forward creatively in response to these challenges. Too much information exists today for a true rebirth to happen. However, self-perpetuating, quasi-renaissance managers might assimilate patterns of thinking and behavior into their professional/personal lives that ultimately make them more intersectional and innovative. Specifically, we point to five habits and three methods managers can implement to lower associative barriers and enhance intersectionality. We then introduce a culling process that helps managers find the few highly creative ideas from larger batches of mediocre ideas, thus enabling enhanced creativity.