1. Creativity
Thank you ….
This research (give status)… please ask questions/provide comments!
Almost exclusively, consumer behavior researchers have focused on understanding the ways in which consumers learn about, construct preferences for, and choose among existing products or services designed to meet their previously identified needs. However, in many situations, consumers’ needs are more specific and unique, and thus, require the consumers themselves to play an integral part in creating their own solution.
These creative problems abound, but…
While thinking creatively is an integral part in the daily life of every consumer, surprisingly little research in marketing has examined the factors influencing such processes. In a 1980 JCR article, Hirschman asserted that, “investigations of creativity have not focused on its potential applicability to everyday consumption activities,” a statement that is still true over twenty years later (p. 283).
An exception is the forthcoming work by Burroughs and Mick (JCR December 04) which I think Kris is quite familiar with…we’ll talk about that later.

2. Creativity Why Constraints:?
In many of our problem solving situations, constraints are active. There’s some theorizing about the role of constraints on creativity, but not much empirical experimental work.
The link between constraints and creativity is also seen in everyday life. (flip to this slide)….
But, before I go into the details of our research, I thought I’d try to put it in the bigger context of creativity research.

3. Creativity Defined The ability to produce work that is BOTH
Novel (i.e., original, unexpected, innovative)
Appropriate (i.e., useful, practical, effective)
(Sternberg 1999; Finke, Ward, & Smith 1992)
Assessing the creativity of outcomes:
The creative product is of critical importance (MacKinnon 1978; Runco 1989), yet there’s been limited emphasis on the psychometric study of ratings. (Plucker and Renzulli p.44)
Product analyses range from straightforward rating scales to conceptually complex consensual assessment techniques. By far the most common method is the use of judges.
In contrast to the technique we employ (giving guides…innovativeness, practicality), some researchers ask judges to rate creativity without guidance or scales. This approach, created by Amabile. is called the Consensual Assessment Technique (p.45). (A product is creative to the extent that appropriate observers independently deem it to be) e.g., people know it when they see it (LIKE PORN)
We use 6 items: original, innovative, creative (changed to novel in last two studies) and practical, effective, and useful ..loaded on 2 factors. In the paper, they’re reported as 1 dv- creativity, but our reviewers asked us to look at the results on the 2 factors independently, so we’ve done that.

4. Creativity Problem Solving Insight Problem Finding 9-Dot Problem
Remote Associates Test
Problem Finding
Requires Problem Definition
Requires an allocation of cognitive capital (Sternberg & Lubart 1991) to “think about what you’re going to think about” (Nickerson 2000)
More associated with creativity (Csikszentmihalyi & Getzels 1971; 1975)
Problem finding, however, (Nickerson 2000) involves thinking about what to think about.
And creative thinking, according to Getzels 1975, often results from problem finding.
If you think about us as academics, we are quite creative. Many doctoral students spend months/years trying to find a problem to study. Sternberg and Lubart (1991) define this as trying to determine where/how to spend your cognitive capital. (This is fundamentally what distinguishes say an MBA education from a PhD)
In problem finding, there many be millions of ways to achieve the abstract goal: create a dissertation that will be interesting enough to land you a job and strong enough to get published.
So, again, most creative thought is on a continuum. Some problems can simply be solved by following a known algorithm or retrieving an existing solution. In many cases, however, the solution must be constructed.

5. Creativity: An individual trait or situation-driven?
Both
Individual Trait
Situation-Driven

6. Theories of Creativity
Thank you ….
This research (give status)… please ask questions/provide comments!
Almost exclusively, consumer behavior researchers have focused on understanding the ways in which consumers learn about, construct preferences for, and choose among existing products or services designed to meet their previously identified needs. However, in many situations, consumers’ needs are more specific and unique, and thus, require the consumers themselves to play an integral part in creating their own solution.
These creative problems abound, but…
While thinking creatively is an integral part in the daily life of every consumer, surprisingly little research in marketing has examined the factors influencing such processes. In a 1980 JCR article, Hirschman asserted that, “investigations of creativity have not focused on its potential applicability to everyday consumption activities,” a statement that is still true over twenty years later (p. 283).
An exception is the forthcoming work by Burroughs and Mick (JCR December 04) which I think Kris is quite familiar with…we’ll talk about that later.

7. Individual Traits Influencing Creativity
Intrinsic Motivation
Personality (e.g., Myers Briggs)
Other Personality-Related Individual Differences:
Left vs. Right Brain
Need for Cognition
Dogmatism
Divergent Thinking Ability
Willingness to Break the Rules
Intelligence

8. Creative Cognition
Path of Least Resistance (“POLR”) (Perkins 1997; Ward 1994)
Top-Down Process
Recall an existing solution to an active problem
Implement a well-known plan to solve it
However, generative thought is often challenging.
Given our nature as satisficers, we’re likely to avoid this type of thought in many situations.
For example, when faced with an open-ended problem: (e.g., the need to put dinner on the table in two hours), consumers may simply retrieve a previously constructed solution (e.g., call Dominos 30 minutes prior to dinner time). Or, “make spaghetti” …ingredients in stock.
Ward calls this strategy following the POLR in which we follow a top down process…recalling an existing solution and implementing a well-known plan to solve it.
There’s nothing wrong with this strategy…it’s cognitively efficient, it produces more reliable solutions, but it rarely generates creative solutions to problems.
What then, does get people off the POLR and into generative and exploratory thought processes? We argue that it is constraints ….

10. Creative Tools

11. Brainstorming Rules Sterling Rice Ideation Defer judgment
Encourage wild ideas
Build on the ideas of others
Sterling Rice Ideation
Case Study: Hot Pockets!

12. Mind Mapping
A visual representation of relationships and critical paths
Harnesses the non-linear way our brains work by capturing associative patterns

13. Analogical Thinking
Three Stages
Access
Mapping
Transfer

14. Breaking Patterns
Abandoning assumptions and looking at problems differently
Changing environments: Hiking in Chautauqua
Observing normal behavior: Flatirons Crossing
How do you get off the “path of least resistance” and out of “rule ruts”?
Challenging your assumptions: Wine bottle exercise
What motivates you to do that?
In this paper, we examine the influence of some factors over which organizaitons have control: the types of employees they hire and the way in which they train and incent them. We look at how these factors influence the quality of the output on a creative task
and ultimately, we will have measures of the value of their designs.

15. Understanding Opportunity
Understanding Opportunity

16. The Entrepreneurial Revolution
1960’s: About 200,000 new enterprises were created per year
Now: About 3.5 million per year businesses are launched each year – with 10-15% of the adult population is attempting to start a business at any given time.
40% of American men will attempt to start a business within their lifetime

17. Traits of an Entrepreneur?
Challenges the status quo
Recognizes patterns - makes new connections
Committed to learning – peripatetic
Visionary
Risk taker
Self-motivated
Locus of control
Tolerance for ambiguity

18. Good Opportunity? Market is strong & accessible Compelling need
Market is strong & accessible
Compelling need
Unique/different
Sustainable competitive advantage
Profitable
Great management

19. Application
Crunch!

20. New Product Development: Risky
To avoid failure, everything has to be right:
Concept
Design
Pricing
Positioning
Packaging
Advertising and Promotion
See if you can figure what went wrong with some of these:
Concept -Gerber food for adults
Nestea’s launch of a yellowish carbonated beverage: Tea Whiz- nam
Frito-Lay Lemonade
Ben-Gay aspirin – concept and branding
Packaging and price -Parfum Bic

21. PDMA Best Practices Survey
The Best:
average 49% of sales from products < 5 yrs old
have a success rate over 80%
Use stage/gate processes more extensively (& more stages)
reward team non-financially in public and private ways
innovate in their use of market research and engineering design tools
Source: Drivers of NPD Success: The PDMA Report
p.80
The best = top 20% out of 383 member firms in US. 20% chosen based on NPD performance over past 15 years.
The best expect more and get more (expect 45% of sales to come from new products commercialized in the last THREE years)

22. Beyond the Business World
The Role of Creativity in Diverse Disciplines
Music
Psychotherapy
Mathematics

23. Managing Creativity In a brand management context
Bill Weintraub, former head of marketing at Coors, Tropicana, Kelloggs
More generally, the lessons from last week