An integrated theory of creativity and innovation
On March 29th at the Department of Psychology was held a regular scientific seminar of ILSCR. Peter Schmidt, the head of the lab, professor of University of Giessen and Higher School of Economics made a report on “An integrated theory of creativity and innovation”.
The seminar covered issues of theoretical views on the subject of creativity and innovation, as well as the basic direction of empirical studies of creativity and innovation in social psychology. In his report, Peter presented a set of criteria for comparison of existing theories of creativity and innovation. Structural models of the impact of cognitive processes, individual and sociocultural predictors for creative behavior in the framework of several empirical approaches were also presented.
The results of studies presented on the seminar shown that a positive attitude to innovation positively correlates to the values of Stimulation and Self-Determination and negatively to the Conservation, Tradition and Conformity (according to Schwartz theory of values). Also, the possible relationship of demographic variables with creativity was discussed. For example, a study in China reveals that gender differences were strongly correlated with creativity and the attitude to innovation. However Peter Schmidt argued that there is lack of research on this issue in European countries and the question remains open.
In his report, Peter also mentioned the specificity of studies of innovation. He touched on important issues for researchers, such as:
• What happens after the innovation?
• Will there be cultural differences in the generalization of innovations in different regions of one country?
• The need to build multi-level theories. The researcher must also take into account the specificity of the adoption of innovations in other social groups.
• How can researcher combine the different results of several studies on one subject?
• The need to combine qualitative, quantitative and experimental methods in one research.
At the end of the report, Peter presented the research models that exist in different studies of creativity. According to the model of creativity and innovativeness developed by the research team of the ILSCR, latent and observed background factors, such as individual factors of values and attitudes, socio-cultural factors of sex and education, will affect different types of norms. The norms, by intention, will affect creative behavior. The seminar ended in a lively discussion of Peter’s presentation.
An integrated theory of creativity and innovation
Alexander Stefanov,
Trainee researcher