From Creativity to Innovation: The Social Network Drivers of the Four Phases of the Idea Journey
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Acknowledgments
- The authors extend their gratitude to associate editor Sherry Thatcher and three anonymous reviewers for their invaluable feedback throughout the review process.
- In this article the authors propose that a conceptualization of the idea journey encompassing phases that the literature has so far overlooked can help solve existing tensions.
- Social networks, creativity, innovation, relationships (e.g., McCrae, 1987; Barron & Harrington, 1981), the notion that creativity is a social process has increasingly gained prominence, also known as Keywords.
- Greater attention and research, however, have revealed inconsistencies.
- The authors conceive of needs as the primary socially derived ingredients that facilitate success in each phase.
Idea Generation: Need for Cognitive Flexibility
- The authors define the idea generation phase as the process of generating a novel and useful idea.
- This phase concludes with the creator selecting a single, novel idea that they deem more promising, useful or valuable than others (Amabile, 1983; Woodman, Sawyer, & Griffin, 1993).
- Wes Anderson, the famous screenwriter and director, got the initial inspiration for the story of The Royal Tenenbaums by the chance purchase of a CD of Maurice Ravel’s music.
- Additional knowledge may elicit more rigid cognitive pathways, making it less likely that individuals will connect previously disconnected elements (Amabile, 1996; Mumford & Gustafson, 1988).
- The creator has the capacity to integrate content from the social environment to generate novel ideas that depart from existing practices within the field.
Idea Elaboration: Need for Support
- The authors define the elaboration phase as the process of systematically evaluating a novel idea’s potential and further clarifying and developing it.
- During this phase, the creator clarifies the initial idea and makes it ready to share with gatekeepers.
- They need emotional support in order to reduce uncertainty and be motivated to push the idea further and not abandon it (Madjar et al., 2002).
- Chris Bangle, BMW director of design, stresses the importance of creating a “fortress” around designers in order to shield them from “hurtful criticism” prematurely (Bangle, 2001: p. 7-8).
Idea Championing: Need for Social Influence and Legitimacy
- The championing phase is defined as the active promotion of a novel idea, aimed at obtaining the approval to push the idea forward and, consequently, also obtaining money, talent, time or political cover (Howell & Higgins, 1990; Kanter, 1983, 1988; Maidique, 1980; Staw, 1990).
- During this phase, he or she tries to sell the idea to film studio executives.
- Shared vision and understanding help overcome interpretive problems, create a common language that guarantees that the idea is correctly communicated to other field members, and ensure its successful interpretation and acceptance (Carlile, 2004; Carlile & Rebentisch, 2003).
- Table 2 depicts key papers in the literature and the phases on which they explicitly and implicitly focus.
- This can be depicted as a continuum (see Figure 1) where the influence of the social context is similarly strong, but contacts’ involvement and creator’s intentionality varies.
Idea Generation and Elaboration: The Weak versus Strong Tie Paradox
- The standard logic commonly used to predict the optimal tie strength and structure for novel ideas can be summarized as follows: tie strength and structures that provide access to nonredundant knowledge content facilitate recombination and, ultimately, creativity (see Perry-Smith & Mannucci, 2015, and Phelps et al., 2012, for reviews).
- Both adopt logics or measures that encompass other phases.
- Taken together, their arguments and existing empirical evidence suggest that weak ties rather than structural holes should be beneficial during the idea generation phase.
- Emotionally close contacts serve the important function of validating one another’s views (Cross & Sproull, 2004; Reis & Shaver, 1988), and their feedback is perceived as constructive, useful and is more easily accepted (Cross, Borgatti, & Parker, 2001; Sniezek & Van Swol, 2001).
- Sosa (2011) suggests that strong ties have a positive impact on creativity, because they increase support and motivation to share ideas.
Idea Championing and Implementation: The Sparseness versus Closure Paradox
- Scholars have argued that structural holes are a relevant source of influence and legitimacy.
- In addition to the problems engendered by strong ties and dense structures, the effectiveness of network activation may also be limited by the extent to which an idea gets caught in recursive loops between phases.
- This is a novel approach to understanding creativity in the social context.
- 1168-1181. friendship network brokerage on attributions and performance, also known as Organization Science, 22.
- He or she must convince producers of the novelty and potential of the ideas.
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"From Creativity to Innovation: The ..." refers background in this paper
...Moreover, closely tied alters tend to develop cooperative norms that generate social pressure to help each other (Coleman, 1988; Granovetter, 1973, 1985)....
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...greater trust and support among members (Aral & Van Alstyne, 2011; Coleman, 1988; Uzzi, 1996; Chua, Morris & Ingram, 2010)....
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...her or his end of the implicit social contract (Adler & Alder, 1995; Coleman, 1988; Smith, 2005)....
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...On the contrary, triadic closure exists to the extent a focal individual’s direct contacts maintain ties to each other (Coleman 1988; Phelps et al., 2012)....
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...On the contrary, triadic closure exists to the extent a focal individual’s direct contacts maintain ties to each other (Coleman 1988; Phelps et al., 2012)....
[...]
29,115 citations
25,601 citations
"From Creativity to Innovation: The ..." refers background in this paper
...Density thus provides the structural condition for creating shared goals and trust between collaborators, thereby facilitating effective collaboration and information sharing (Ahuja, 2000; Granovetter, 1985; Uzzi & Spiro, 2005)....
[...]
...Moreover, closely tied alters tend to develop cooperative norms that generate social pressure to help each other (Coleman, 1988; Granovetter, 1973, 1985)....
[...]
21,451 citations
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Frequently Asked Questions (11)
Q2. What does Sosa say about strong ties?
Sosa (2011) suggests that strong ties have a positive impact on creativity, because they increase support and motivation to share ideas.
Q3. What is the premise behind the argument that strong ties are critical for championing?
The premise behind the argument that strong ties are critical for championing is that friends have more social influence over friends (Krackhardt, 1992).
Q4. What is the effect of rewards on the creation of an idea?
It may be that rewards negatively affect generation, as the reward may detract from the cognitive generation process, but rewards may be beneficial during the elaboration phase, when a creator is at risk of abandoning the idea.
Q5. What is the importance of changing frames for creative problem solving?
Although the importance of changing frames for creative problem solving has been acknowledged (Mumford, Mobley, Reiter‐Palmon, Uhlman, & Doares, 1991; Reiter-Palmon, Mumford, O’ Connor, & Runco, 1997), their application to social networks extends its importance beyond generating novel solutions.
Q6. What are some aspects of strong ties that facilitate understanding of an idea?
Some aspects of strong ties may facilitate understanding of an idea, as they favor value recognition (Friedkin, 1980), creation of a common language (Tortoriello & Krackhardt, 2010), and the development of heuristics and shared meaning (Uzzi, 1997).
Q7. What is the important determinant of a group’s ability to produce innovative outcomes?
In a meta-analytic study, Hülsheger, Anderson, and Salgado (2009) find that shared vision is the most important determinant of a group’s ability to produce innovative outcomes.
Q8. what is the way to predict the optimal tie strength and structure fornovel ideas?
The standard logic commonly used to predict the optimal tie strength and structure fornovel ideas can be summarized as follows: tie strength and structures that provide access to nonredundant knowledge content facilitate recombination and, ultimately, creativity (see Perry-Smith & Mannucci, 2015, and Phelps et al., 2012, for reviews).
Q9. What does the paper suggest that is more beneficial in certain phases?
while the authors suggest that dyadic tie strength and structure are more beneficial in certain phases, this does not mean that the non-primary network characteristic can never be beneficial.
Q10. What does the author suggest that can be resolved?
The authors suggest that these contradictions can be resolved if the creator activates different parts of his or her network in different phases, and that this depends on his or her ability to change interpretations and frames across phases.
Q11. What is the definition of a locus of control?
When a creator assumes that he or she is driving and controlling a given event, he or she is said to adopt an internal locus of control as opposed to the assumption that overall performance and control resides outside the creator, the so-called external locus of control (e.g., Ferree & Miller, 1985; Klandermans, 1984; Snow, et al., 1986).