Harvard Business Review Teresa Amabile

Three Components of Creativity Expertise Creative Thinking Skills Motivation

Managerial Practices Challenge Freedom Resources Work-Group Features Supervisory Encouragement Organizational Support

Challenge Matching people to the right tasks Play to their expertise and skills in creative thinking Stretch employees’ abilities Detailed information about employees Not trying to obtain the information necessary to make good connections between people and jobs

Freedom More freedom leads to better creativity Change in goals or not clearly defined Not truly granting independence

Resources Time and money Fake deadlines kill creativity Keep resources tight

Work-Group Features Pay careful attention to the design of a team Teams need to show excitement, willingness, and the recognition of what other team members bring to the table Assembling homogeneous teams

Supervisory Encouragement Make sure the employee feels valued Failing to acknowledge innovative efforts or by greeting them with skepticism leads to killing creativity

Organizational Support The entire organization needs to support creativity Reward employees who are creative Mandate information sharing and collaboration Fighting and gossip in an organization can lead to the damage of creativity

Rewards and Risks Fostering creativity is in the hands of the managers Creativity often requires managers to radically change the ways in which they build and interact with work groups. When creativity is killed, there is a lose of new ideas, energy, and commitment from the employees

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