Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Creativity'

Poche qualità umane hanno un così forte impatto sulla nostra esistenza quanto la creatività (Scott et al., 2004). Il presente progetto di ricerca raccoglie le sfide identificate da Houtz (2003) come cruciali per la ricerca psicologica: riconoscere, potenziare e comprendere la creatività. Il progetto si focalizza sul concetto di pensiero divergente (Guilford, 1956) come risvolto cognitivo della creatività e si divide in tre studi. Il primo studio presenta un contributo alla validazione del Wallach Kogan Creativity Test (1965). Nel secondo studio ill WKCT, validato nel primo studio, insieme al Test di pensiero creativo (Sprini e Tomasello, 1989 - versione italiana del Torrance Test of Creative Thinking, Torrance 1966) è servita per valutare l'efficacia di un training di pensiero creativo. Nel terzo studio a 306 soggetti di seconda media sono stati somministrati i seguenti strumenti: Big Five Questionnaire – Children (Barbaranelli et al.,1998), Test di pensiero creativo - forma A, parte verbale (Sprini e Tomasello, 1989) versione italiana del Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT; Torrance, 1966) e una serie di item utilizzati da Choi (2004). Quindi è stata condotta una path analysis per testare un modello in cui personalità, motivazione, pensiero divergente e variabili contestuali sono predittori dell'atteggiamento creativo.
Improving creative thinking is a crucial challenge for the progress of human beings and nations (Florida, 2002). The research project aims at recognizing, fostering and understanding divergent thinking (Guilford, 1956) as cognitive aspect of creativity. The project consists of 3 studies. First study is a contribution to the Italian validation of Wallach Kogan Creativity Test (1965) with subjects aged 12. Second study is an experimental research conducted in a school with children 12 years old. A group of them followed a three-months-training that aimed at fostering divergent thinking abilities, another group served as control. Pretest and posttest were administered using Wallach Kogan Creativity Test (1965) previously validated and also the Italian version of Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (Torrance, 1966) in the verbal form (Sprini & Tomasello, 1989). Third study presents a path analysis to test a model in which personality, motivation, divergent thinking and contextual variables are predictors of a creative aptitude.

Poche qualità umane hanno un così forte impatto sulla nostra esistenza quanto la creatività (Scott et al., 2004). Il presente progetto di ricerca raccoglie le sfide identificate da Houtz (2003) come cruciali per la ricerca psicologica: riconoscere, potenziare e comprendere la creatività. Il progetto si focalizza sul concetto di pensiero divergente (Guilford, 1956) come risvolto cognitivo della creatività e si divide in tre studi. Il primo studio presenta un contributo alla validazione del Wallach Kogan Creativity Test (1965). Nel secondo studio ill WKCT, validato nel primo studio, insieme al Test di pensiero creativo (Sprini e Tomasello, 1989 - versione italiana del Torrance Test of Creative Thinking, Torrance 1966) è servita per valutare l'efficacia di un training di pensiero creativo. Nel terzo studio a 306 soggetti di seconda media sono stati somministrati i seguenti strumenti: Big Five Questionnaire – Children (Barbaranelli et al.,1998), Test di pensiero creativo - forma A, parte verbale (Sprini e Tomasello, 1989) versione italiana del Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT; Torrance, 1966) e una serie di item utilizzati da Choi (2004). Quindi è stata condotta una path analysis per testare un modello in cui personalità, motivazione, pensiero divergente e variabili contestuali sono predittori dell'atteggiamento creativo.
Improving creative thinking is a crucial challenge for the progress of human beings and nations (Florida, 2002). The research project aims at recognizing, fostering and understanding divergent thinking (Guilford, 1956) as cognitive aspect of creativity. The project consists of 3 studies. First study is a contribution to the Italian validation of Wallach Kogan Creativity Test (1965) with subjects aged 12. Second study is an experimental research conducted in a school with children 12 years old. A group of them followed a three-months-training that aimed at fostering divergent thinking abilities, another group served as control. Pretest and posttest were administered using Wallach Kogan Creativity Test (1965) previously validated and also the Italian version of Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (Torrance, 1966) in the verbal form (Sprini & Tomasello, 1989). Third study presents a path analysis to test a model in which personality, motivation, divergent thinking and contextual variables are predictors of a creative aptitude.

This research documents the design, development and delivery of a two year programme of creative problem solving (CPS) workshops which were incorporated into the syllabus of the BA (Hons) Advertising course at Southampton Solent University. The initial phase of this research involved an examination of creative problem solving techniques and approaches, together with the teaching, learning and assessment sttrategies employed to evaluate creative products, processes and individuals themselves. This is supplemented by an audit of course content across other advertising degree programmes within the United Kingdom and an extensive survey of senior advertising creatives and account executives, examining the qualities they seek in undergraduate recruits. This three-pronged approach, focusing on research into creativity, current practice in advertising education and the requirements of the advertising industry provided the practical and theoretical framework on which the programme was subsequently designed. The second phase of the research, examines the impact of the programme on the creative performance of the students participating in the workshops. The results of divergent thinking tests administered before and after the first year of the programme, together with journal entries and observational notes made at the time of delivery, provide evidence that structured training in the use of CPS techniques can enhance creative ability and promote originality and creative fluency. A new theoretical model to explain the dynamic relationship between frequency, relevancy and originality of ideas is proposed together with various strategies for stimulating ideas and sustaining the frequency of idea generation. Subsequent to this, the research identifies new techniques for idea generation and proposes alternative systems for briefing creatives and fostering creativity in higher education and the workplace.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2004.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 279-297).
This thesis is about political change and the possibilities for politically creative individuals to achieve desired change. To identify such possibilities, I argue that we should employ a catalog of analytical tools from the social, psychological and cognitive sciences, organized in three sets. One covers social dynamics, the social mechanisms behind stability and change, either sudden or incremental; the second captures ordinary differences among group members in how they understand conditions, react to events, and connect to others; and the third set deals with extraordinary differences in mindsets and aptitudes which may enable individuals to exert considerable influence on conditions. A fundamental problem is the difficulty of separating the impact of individual action (agency) from effects of social conditions and trends (structure), given that political events involve interaction of the two. My solution is to focus onprojects for political change, which are long-term endeavors that go against prevailing conditions and conventional ideas, and which focus upon changing one broad element of the political landscape (such as to restructure inter-group relations, to empower a previously weak constituency, to change certain status quo ideas and practices, or to reshape particular institutions of government). Such long-term work by specific actors facilitates analysis of whether they (and people in similar positions) face extraordinary problems, and whether extraordinary differences are necessary to bring creative political change. The first half of this thesis builds the three toolsets and an approach for applying them to considerations of political creativity. The second half supports this theory building by demonstrating that the tools and
(cont.) approach are useful and feasible, through applications to several studies of efforts at political change, which achieved varying levels of success. Overall, the idea is to coordinate findings about the dynamics of social conditions and about individual characteristics, to better understand possibilities for political creativity.
by Brett V. Kubicek.
Ph.D.

Today advertisers face the challenge of securing advertising effectiveness by producing advertisement that gets the consumers’ attention and shape their attitudes and behavior. One suggested way to reach these objectives is creativity. Both advertising industry professionals, awards, effectiveness reports and research support this notion that what makes advertising effective is creative excellence. However, research has shown that advertising professionals seems to have little formalized understanding about how advertising creativity work and how it is defined and measured. Current research need to better understand the response to creative advertisements by documenting how advertising professionals and consumer assess and value creativity. By applying new perspectives and new theories this thesis investigate the effects advertising creativity has on consumers. The thesis reviews the academic research on advertising creativity and contributes with five articles to increase the understanding of advertising creativity and how perceptions of creativity influence advertising effectiveness. In so doing, it plays a part in advertisers understanding and use of advertising creativity.

Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan i Stockholm, 2012. Sammanfattning jämte 5 uppsatser.

Submitted by Silvana Teresinha Dornelles Studzinski (sstudzinski) on 2016-06-28T13:48:21Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Sílvio Luís de Vasconcellos_.pdf: 1134005 bytes, checksum: 78155a4aea372344a4600c9d07d1857d (MD5)
Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-28T13:48:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Sílvio Luís de Vasconcellos_.pdf: 1134005 bytes, checksum: 78155a4aea372344a4600c9d07d1857d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-30
CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior
Este estudo investiga o papel direto da criatividade organizacional - como um recurso de alto nível - durante o envolvimento internacional, bem como propõe que a criatividade organizacional nutre tanto a capacidade inovadora quanto a empreendedora como mediadoras para o envolvimento internacional da firma. Em um sentido objetivo, a capacidade inovadora medeia essa relação, uma vez que criatividade promove a inovação. Em um sentido subjetivo, é a capacidade empreendedora que exerce esse papel, oferecendo alternativas para resolver problemas quando a firma enfrenta a incerteza inerente à arena internacional. A investigação empírica ocorreu em firmas pertencentes à indústria audiovisual brasileira, resultando em 78 respostas válidas. Esta pesquisa é um estudo exploratório-descritivo construído em duas fases principais: em primeiro lugar, uma fase exploratória investigou não só a literatura, mas também o ambiente empírico por meio de entrevistas com especialistas visando ampliar o conhecimento sobre o campo. Em segundo lugar, uma fase descritiva avaliou o ambiente por uma abordagem quantitativa baseada em uma survey. A técnica de análise utilizada foi a análise de regressão. Os resultados confirmaram as hipóteses desenvolvidas nesta pesquisa. Os resultados sugerem que há uma relação direta entre a criatividade organizacional com o envolvimento internacional. Além disso, evidenciou que a relação entre criatividade organizacional com o envolvimento internacional da empresa se intensifica, quando as capacidades inovadora e a empreendedora medeiam essa relação. As limitações deste estudo refletem sua singularidade. Além de investigar um tema subjetivo, a pesquisa abrangeu apenas um setor da economia criativa em apenas um país, o Brasil. Este estudo tem implicações em várias esferas, como organizacionais, industriais e governamentais. A originalidade deste estudo engloba não só uma explanação sobre o papel da criatividade organizacional no envolvimento internacional das empresas que se fazem parte da economia criativa, mas também contribui para ampliar e tomar em conjunto abordagens teóricas sobre criatividade, inovação, empreendedorismo e internacionalização, ao nível organizacional de investigação.
This study investigates the direct role of organizational creativity - as a leading resource - during the international involvement as well as proposes that organizational creativity nurtures both innovative and entrepreneurial capabilities as mediators for the international involvement of the firm. In an objective sense, the innovative capability mediates such relationship once creativity nurtures innovation. In a subjective sense, entrepreneurial capability intermediates this relationship while offering alternatives to solve problems when the firm faces the uncertainty inherent in the international arena. The empirical investigation took place in firms embedded in the Brazilian audiovisual industry, resulting in 78 valid responses. This research is an exploratory-descriptive study built in two main stages: Firstly, an exploratory stage investigated not only the literature but also the environment using interviews with experts to enlarge knowledge about the field. Secondly, a descriptive stage evaluated the field by a quantitative approach based on a survey. The analysis technique applied was regression analysis. Results confirmed the hypotheses designed in this research. We found evidence that there is a direct relationship between organizational creativity with international involvement. Moreover, it was evident that the relationship between organizational creativity with the international involvement intensifies when innovative and entrepreneurial capabilities mediate this relationship. Limitations of this study reflect its singularity. Besides investigating a subjective theme, the research covered just one industry of creative economy in just one country, Brazil. The study has implications in several spheres, such as theoretical, organizational, industrial, and public policies. The originality of this study encompasses not only an explanation of the role of organizational creativity in the international involvement of firms engaged in the creative economy, but also contributes to enlarge and take together theoretical approaches about creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, and internationalization, at the organizational level of investigation.

Tématem této magistrské práce je průzkum metod a principů pohybové výchovy, která je vyučována na Katedře Autorské tvorby a Pedagogiky (KATaP). Magisterské studium Herectví se zaměřením na autorskou tvorbu a pedagogiku začalo být vyučováno na DAMU v roce 2015. V průběhu dvou let jsou pohybové kurzy vyučovány třemi profesory. Všichni tři mají odlišné pojetí výuky, avšak usilují o společný cíl – aby studenti získali větší povědomí o svým těle a dosáhli lepší kontroly nad každodenními pohybovými návyky, stejnak tak i o pohybu na jevišti. Přestože je program navržen jako obdoba česky vyučovaného programu, různorodost kultury a temperamentu studentů přispěla k určitým obměnám, což představuje velkou příležitost, jakým směrem se obor na katedře vyvíjí. Diplomová práce je rozdělena do tří hlavních kapitol, které se zabývají: držením těl, prostorem a představivostí. Každá kapitola zahrnuje popis cvičení, jež bylo součástí kurzu pohybu na KATaPu a které se vztahuje k danému tématu. Zdrojem popisu cvičení, stejně tak úvah a změn, které jsem pociťovala v průběhu a po cvičení, jsou převzaty z mých poznámek a ze semestrálních poznatků. Každá kapitola je podložena publikovanou teorií, jež dodává pohybovým kurzům teoretický základ. Poslední kapitola je věnována průzkumu vztahu mezi představivostí a pohybem a jak tento vztah ovlivňuje hercovu kreativitu. Hlavním motivem pro vznik diplomové práce je můj vděk za transformaci, kterou si mé tělo prošlo během studia na KATaPu. To je důvod, proč se domnívám, že obsah výuky mého oboru je obohacující jednak pro teoretiky, učitele nebo jiné odborníky ve světě múzických umění, stejně tak jako pro lidi, kteří mají jen zájem dozvědět se něco jiného o svém těle.

Tl;dr: Using computers to produce creative artefacts is a form of computational creativity. Using creative techniques computationally is creative computing. Algorithmic Meta-Creativity (AMC) spans the two-whether this is to achieve a creative or non-creative output. Creativity in humans needs to be interpreted differently to machines. Humans and machines differ in many ways, we have different 'brains/memory', 'thinking processes/software' and 'bodies/hardware'. Often creative output by machines is judged in human terms. Computers which are truly artificially intelligent might be capable of true artificial creativity. Until then, they are (philosophical) zombie robots: machines that behave like humans but aren't conscious. The only alternative is to see any computer creativity as a direct or indirect expression of human creativity using digital means and evaluate it as such. AMC is neither machine creativity nor human creativity-it is both. By acknowledging the undeniable link between computer creativity and its human influence (the machine is just a tool for the human) we enter a new realm of thought. How is AMC defined and evaluated? This thesis addresses this issue. First AMC is embodied in an artefact (a pataphysical search tool: pata.physics.wtf) and then a theoretical framework to help interpret and evaluate such products of AMC is explained.

This work presents a compendium of models and taxonomies classifying attributes involved in innovation and creativity. The frameworks proposed by several authors to characterize those processes, provide an approach to the subject and the means to its evaluation, both in qualitative and quantitative form. This work does not focus only on the psychological point of view of creative thinking, instead it considers its practical implications, following the proposals of researchers, developers and users in several knowledge fields, in various professions or academic environments.
El trabajo presenta una recopilación de modelos y taxonomías que brindan clasificaciones de los atributos involucrados en la innovación y la creatividad. Las categorías de los marcos referenciales propuestos por varios autores sobre estos procesos, conducen a una aproximación sobre el tema y la forma de caracterizarla para hacer su medición cualitativa y cuantitativa. El enfoque de esta recopilación de modelos y taxonomías no se centra en el punto de vista psicológico conceptual o experimental del “pensamiento creativo”, sino plantea una visión con un sentido práctico, en función de las propuestas de investigadores, desarrolladores y usuarios en varios campos del conocimiento, para su aplicación en diversas profesiones o ambientes académicos.
O trabalho apresenta uma recopilação dos modelos e taxonomias que oferecem as classificações dos atributos envolvidos na inovação e criatividade. As categorias dos marcos de referência propostos por vários autores sobre estes processos, levam a uma abordagem do tema e de como caracterizá-lo para sua mensuração qualitativa e quantitativa. O foco desta recopilação de modelos e taxonomias não incide no olhar psicológico conceitual ou experi- mental do “pensamento criativo”, mas levanta uma visão com um sentido prático, de acordo com as propostas de pesquisadores, criadores e usuários em vários campos do conhecimento para sua aplicação em várias profissões ou ambientes acadêmicos.

Group diversity and group size were manipulated in a laboratory experiment for their influence on the quantity and quality of creative performance. Student subjects were preselected to high and low diverse groups and were randomly assigned to dyads, four-person groups, or individual work. The task was the identification of unusual uses for three common objects. The quantity criterion was the number of non-duplicate uses produced by each group. The quality criterion was the extent to which the uses identified were unusual for the whole sample. The prediction that dyad groups would demonstrate the greatest creative performance was generally not supported. With respect to the number of ideas produced, dyad groups outperformed four-person groups. In the quality of creative performance there was no difference found between dyad and four person groups. For both quantity and quality measures, dyad and four-person groups were outperformed by individuals in nominal groups. Contrary to the prediction that dyads would show the greatest influence of diversity, no difference in creative performance was found in either dyad or four-person groups due to the diversity condition. The influence of diversity was, however, found in both the quantity and quality of creative performance of individuals in nominal groups. Results indicate that for the particular task of producing a number of quality creative ideas, the one-to-one dyad condition is superior to the group, but individuals, working independently, outproduce members in either of the group conditions. Explanation for the unpredicted results explore a number of "group effects" as intervening variables between group size and performance. Considering the nature of the task it was concluded that social loafing is the most likely group effect.

This thesis focuses on defining what creativity is, how it can be encouraged and how this is done in consulting firms today. This is done through a literary study to gather information on what creativity is and how to encourage creativity effectively in software consulting. During the cours of the work, a case study which aims to gather where the company is acting correct according to the literature and what could be improved was done in the consultant firm Dewires' offices. This is further explored with the help of both focus group interviews and individual interviews where the recognised factors of creativity in companies found in the literature is discussed with the employees. The results are then presented and discussed to find what can be improved upon in the future to further encourage the employees to be more creative.

Today’s workgroups need to be flexible, creative, and innovative to react swiftly to changing internal and external business environments. This is a real challenge when corporate cultures promote speed and cost-cutting measures. Yet a possible remedy exists to facilitate the cultivation of creativity within groups and that is through the use of mindfulness. This research sought to answer the question: In what way, if any, does mindfulness contribute to creativity within a workgroup? To explore this question, it was necessary to review three distinct areas within literature: creativity, mindfulness, and group process.

A 15-week, multi-methods study was developed based on existing research, most of which has been done within laboratory constructed designs. This study adapted the existing designs and applied them in a real world organizational setting. The research participants included members of an intact workgroup divided into a Treatment Group and Comparison Group. Individual and group creativity was assessed before and after a 5-week series of mindfulness training. The results indicated that the mindfulness training impacted creativity both in the moment and over time in most measures. Practical implications are offered for organizations to develop creative and innovative responses to business challenges.

This research studied children’s educational outdoor environments in order to understand which contexts and environmental characteristics support children’s creativity in play. Creativity is an important factor in children’s cognitive development; children’s creativity can flourish in outdoor environments as they can engage in free play. Accordingly, this research had two central aims: Aim 1: To classify and assess children’s levels of creativity during play. Aim 2: To develop design principles for educational outdoor environments in order to nurture children's creativity in play. Initially, behaviour observation and the Leuven Wellbeing and Involvement Scale were used to collect data for a pilot study. Children’s play behaviours were observed and analysed, and based on the Evaluation of Potential for Creativity, the Creative Play Taxonomy was designed in relation to the first aim of the study. Then, at two study sites, experimental research was designed. At both study sites, children were observed in four different play contexts. At Study Site One, duration recording was used and the videorecorder observations were coded with the Creative Play Taxonomy using the software The Observer from Noldus. At Study Site Two, narrative recording was used in the observation sessions and focus group discussions were held with the children. The findings from both study sites achieved the second aim of this study. The current research makes two main contributions to knowledge. Firstly, it introduces the Creative Play Taxonomy, which can be used by researchers, psychologists, educationalists and related disciplines to understand, categorise and assess children’s creativity in play. Secondly, it increases the understanding of the particular play contexts that support children’s creativity in play, and the environmental characteristics that enhance these types of play. Accordingly, this research suggests that: - Outdoor play spaces should include a variety of different play contexts to encourage creative play amongst different groups of children. - The most effective play contexts for children’s creativity are those facilitated with flexible, changeable, mouldable, movable, multi-functional and open-ended play materials. - Children’s outdoor play spaces should be facilitated with loose parts, both natural and synthetic, as they are highly supportive of children’s creativity. - Natural outdoor environments and elements highly encourage creative play behaviours amongst children. The findings are intended to guide landscape architects and playground design professionals to produce informed design decisions based on the framework of creativity, in order to nurture children's creative thinking abilities.

The present thesis aims to explore creativity as representation, action and cultural participation in the context of a traditional folk art. It develops a cultural psychological approach to the phenomenon, one that considers creativity situated between creators, creations, audiences, and a complex background of norms and beliefs. A tetradic framework is thus formulated trying to capture the dynamic between self and other, “new” and “old” in creative production and in particular their inter-relation through processes of integration, externalisation, internalisation and social interaction. This model guided the research design, starting from the three main questions of the thesis: how people attribute creative value to the craft, what makes the activity of decoration creative and how children’s engagement with this practice develops during ontogenesis. The folk art chosen for this study is Easter egg decoration in two socio-cultural milieus in Romania, the urban setting of Bucharest and the village of Ciocăneşti. This craft was selected for its rich symbolism and polyphony of practices that situate it at the intersection between folklore, religion, art and a growing market. In this context, the first research included in the thesis investigates patterns of creativity evaluation in the case of ethnographers, priests, art teachers and folk artists and highlights their relation to the practices and beliefs particular for each of these groups. The second study uses a pragmatist-inspired model to analyse creative action in the case of decorators from the urban and rural setting and outlines the general stages and micro-genetic aspects of creativity specific for both contexts. Finally, the last piece of research considers creativity development in the two settings above as shaped by different practices of socialisation and enculturation. In the end, reflections are offered on the general conception of egg decoration as mastery in ways that bring to the fore the interdependence between tradition and creativity and suggest the existence of habitual forms of creative expression.

This thesis looks at the way in which drama education constructs opportunities for learning. Constructivism and self-organising systems theory are used to further understand how individuals and societies construct their own learning. Important in this process is the self-conscious experience of the learner. The notion of being ‘in learning’ rather than outside of and observing the learning is central. This consciousness facilitates the creation of meaning, which plays a role in determining the manner in which further participation in learning occurs, hence further learning. This emphasises the process of learning over the product of learning. The function that language and emotion serve in this process also deserves consideration. This perspective upon process has a considerable impact upon the way in which learners make meaning and the way in which they approach learning. Questions surrounding a consciousness of participation bring the senses, the feelings, the emotions and other physical experience to the fore. They require that the learning of the body be experienced. Embodied learning is insufficiently acknowledged and theorised in drama education. Through bringing together constructivism, systems theory, drama education and contemporary performance theory this thesis argues for a greater recognition of the relationship between the body and learning.
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner. It is not a mechanical routine but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, and I play two preludes and fugues by Bach??? It is a sort of benediction on the house??? It is a rediscovery of the wonder of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being. The music is never the same for me, never. Each day it is something new, fantastic, and unbelievable. That is Bach??? a miracle! A whole radiance of space and poetry pours forth from them! They are the very essence of Bach, and Bach is the essence of music. (Casals:1974:17 & 47). Such comments, common among musicians, are usually ignored by the disciplines that study music. This thesis, however, is the result of a decision to take these comments seriously. This thesis addresses the issues of creativity, order and discipline, through the perspective of a sociology and phenomenology of everyday life. The main issues of this thesis are first introduced through Bachelard???s phenomenological study of poetry and Heidegger???s approach to art. Embodied modes of knowing are introduced through Buber???s dialogic I-Thou concept. This is followed by Winnicott???s discussion of creativity and Bohm and Peat???s discussion of order. Discipline is introduced through a counter-analysis of some central sociological theorists on authority and power: Lukes, Foucault and Durkheim. Among other writers influential for the thesis are Eliade on origins, sacred temporality and ???eternal return???, Simmel and Douglas on space, Levinas, Merton, Herrigel and Stendl- Rast on ethics and discipline. Hegel and Sartre on identity-logic and Serres on relational modes of knowing. The main issues are drawn from experiences with music and particularly with the music of J. S. Bach. These experiences raise ontological, cosmological and epistemological questions that are examined in this thesis. The material used in the analysis is drawn from musicians??? experiences and from a variety of sources non-academic and academic.

The aim of this research is to understand and explain designers - what makes them tick, what motivates them and why they do things in the way that they do. A research approach specific to people, being designers, and the social science framework associated with Pierre Bourdieu has been rigorously engaged. Designers have been spoken to face-to-face and given the opportunity to raise their concerns so that their engagement with design production is illuminated and considered. A series of interviews has been carried out with practising designers. The early interviews exposed areas of interest that could best be investigated by targeting older designers who could recount the changes in design production they had witnessed during their working lives. This life history approach has yielded social as opposed to technical descriptions of design practice and has identified significant technological and organisational changes that have affected designers in the past 30 years. The design habitus is a system of dispositions that enables designers to act as they do and be successful in such a complex, interactive activity as designing. Designers display the habitus through their practice and their interactions with other people, with the products they design and the machinery they use when designing. They make distinctions about the products of their activity on through designers’ continuous physical engagement with the objects of their work and their design colleagues. Their attitude to technology is typified by a willingness to embrace the new; they create new things themselves and this leads them to adopt new tools and adapt them to do their job.

This thesis analyses the long-distance control of the environmentally-situated imagination, in both spatial and temporal dimensions. Central to the project is what I call the extended social brain hypothesis. Grounded in the Peircean conception of 'pragmaticism‘, this re-introduces technical intelligence to Dunbar‘s social brain—conceptually, through Clark‘s 'extended mind‘ philosophy, and materially, through Callon‘s 'actor–network theory‘. I claim that: There is no subjectivity without intersubjectivity. That is to say: as an evolutionary matter, it was necessary for the empathic capacities to evolve before the sense of self we identify as human could emerge. Intersubjectivity is critical to human communication, because of its role in interpreting intention. While the idea that human communication requires three levels of intentionality carries analytical weight, I argue that the inflationary trajectory is wrong as an evolutionary matter. The trend is instead towards increasing powers of individuation. The capacity for tool-use is emphasized less under the social brain hypothesis, but the importance of digital manipulation needs to be reasserted as part of a mature ontology. These claims are modulated to substantiate the work-maker, a socially situated (and embodied) creative agent who draws together Peircean notions of epistemology, phenomenology and oral performance.

This dissertation explores new frontiers of creativity. Currently, the concept of creativity is limited, restricting us to a narrow view of the phenomenon. To remedy this, I investigate new cases of behaviour, entities and systems. To do so, I construct a definition of creativity that can be applies outside the domain of human activity, and examine a broad array of examples that are entirely new to studies of creativity. In doing so, limitations owing to our ability to recognize creativity are made apparent. I argue that a new way of approaching creativity is required to overcome these limitations, and propose a diachronic definition of creativity based on a general systems law. Using the diachronic definition of creative behaviour. I discover a number of creative systems at different organizational scales, including prion adaptation and biogenesis. I argue that these newfound examples of creativity and the definition that exploses them, have significant implications for how we understand creativity.

This study explored the views of teachers and further education lecturers in England and Wales about creativity and its development. A survey questionnaire was administered to 1028 teachers and lecturers, and interviews were conducted with a sub-sample of 31 teachers. The questionnaire included original measures of teachers' opinions about creativity and teaching style preferences, as well as the Torrance "Ideal Pupil" and "Ideal Person" Checklists - included to facilitate comparisons with previous research. Results indicate that most teachers subscribe to a definition of creativity perceived mainly in terms of "imagination", "originality" and "self-expression". "Divergence is regarded as synonymous with creativity by only half the sample. Most teachers think creativity can be developed, but almost three quarters think it is rare. Creativity is perceived as quite different from intelligence. Over two thirds think creativity is limitless, whilst less than a third think intelligence is. Clear differences in views on creativity emerged in terms of some major socio-biographical factors - sex and subjects taught, in particular. Such differences appear to be linked to teaching style preferences by the phenomenon "person orientation", as defined by Collings (1978). It has been found that females, general subject teachers, creative arts teachers and nurse tutors tend to favour a pupil oriented teaching style significantly more than males and maths/science/ technology teachers. Moreover, females are significantly more likely to view creativity in terms of self-expression than males, who are more "objectoriented", as discussed by Collings and Smithers (1984). Similarly, maths/science/technology teachers are significantly less likely to envisage creativity as "self-expression" than are all other groups. What mainly distinguishes those teachers in the sample most oriented to creativity from those much less oriented, is a body of opinion which reflects a preference for pupil-centred learning.

Thesis: M. Eng. in Logistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2015.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 112-114).
Retail fashion sales inherently involve the promotion and presentation of products that need to be differentiated from all other products in the crowded market. While the products themselves can exhibit some unique characteristics, the actual presentation of the products can help to make them appear unique and lend additional perceived value to them so that consumers will purchase them. Such a marketing technique requires an extreme commitment to creativity in terms of the methods of display and the associated non-sale items used to showcase the products available for purchase. For a particular fashion retailer, this manifests itself in the acquisition of specialty items that often become permanent elements of the display inventory. The commitment to the creative process is often at odds with the logistics required to procure, transport, install and store the display items which has resulted in a number of critical issues for the retailer. The resulting operational difficulties have reduced efficiency and increased the time required for logistics operations, and create unsafe conditions for the logistics team members. This thesis takes a closer look at the problem and its root causes, and suggests specific actions to ameliorate the current circumstances and build a foundation for improved operations in the future. Through analysis of mini-case studies and the behavioral aspects behind them, the thesis determines the root causes of the issues and identifies strategies to address them. The thesis identifies the overcrowded warehouse as the nexus between the creative and logistics teams and addresses the capacity issue within as the quintessential symptom of the problems facing the retailer. The thesis concludes by detailing recommendations for process improvement and the benefits therein.
by Collin Brady and Joseph H. Williams, Jr.
M. Eng. in Logistics

Thesis (MEd)--Stellenbosch University, 2000.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In this masters thesis the nature and theory of entrepreneurship, leadership and creativity are discussed. The primary objectives were to identify the entrepreneur. The secondary objectives were to evaluate that when he corporates his leadership skills and creativity if he can be a winner. Entrepreneurs create and manage change. Action-orientation is the essence of entrepreneurship. In order to achieve the above-mentioned objectives an in-depth literature study was carried out. It was followed by informal interviews with different entrepreneurs, managers and leaders of big and small businesses. Young entrepreneurs were also interviewed. During this study it was found that leadership and creativity are necessary for entrepreneurship, in order to prosper in an increasingly competitive world. Development of entrepreneurship, leadership and creativity becomes an important strategic objective of schools and other organisations. There is a need for training young people and adults efficiently. This situation poses definite challenges. On the part of educators it requires innovative and unique approaches to develop these abilities. Entrepreneurs are leaders. Being a leader is a prerequisite to entrepreneurship. An entrepreneur must be a leader to attract, retain and get the most out of financiers, suppliers, customers, consultants, professionals and contractors. He must be a leader to get the best out of himself. Some entrepreneurs lead in such a way that their leadership is easy to observe and to understand, while others' ways are less visible or comprehensible; but they are all leaders. One thinks that leaders are born with leadership talent. Some small elements of leadership may come with birth (Shefsky, 1994: 168), but those elements tend to determine the quality of the leadership, not the existence of leadership talent. People can be educated how to be leaders. This can also be taught at school. Entrepreneurial leadership develops by keeping perspective so that dreams can become reality, knowing why one must lead, identifying targets and staying focussed. Like other forms of leadership, entrepreneurial leadership entails a blend of what is ethically correct and what is financially successful. The entrepreneurial leader must be prepared for the stimulation and the responsibility of the position. Creativity in entrepreneurship is challenging and stimulating. Intuition is the enabling factor in creativity. Once the entrepreneurial leader creates, he tears apart his good ideas. He will analyse how long his idea will take to develop, what the risk is and what the market is. He will estimate both sides of success, spectacular and worst case scenarios. His mind will be open for creativity to truth. He will be inquisitive, he will question everything and try to figure out how in the world everything can be done better.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In hierdie verhandeling word die aard en teorie van entrepreneurskap, leierskap en kreatiwiteit bespreek. Die primêre doelwitte was om te bepaal of die entrepreneur suksesvol kan wees as hy leierskap en kreatiwiteit koppel aan entrepreneurskap. Die entrepreneur skep verandering en hy bestuur verandering. Die wese van die entrepreneur is daarin om daadwerkilk op te tree. Om bogenoemde doelwitte te verwesenlik, is en diepgaande Iieteratuurstudie gedoen, asook onderhoude gevoer met verskeie entrepreneurs, bestuurders en leiers van groot en klein sakeondernemings. Daar is ook onderhoude met skoolgaande en jong entrepreneurs gevoer. Tydens die studie is bevind dat leierskap en kreatiwiteit noodsaaklik is vir entrepreneurskap ten einde voorspoedig te wees en vooruit te gaan in en Wêreld wat toenemend mededingend raak. Ontwikkeling van entrepreneurskap, leierskap en kreatiwiteit raak al hoe meer die strategiese doelwitte van skole en ander organisasies. Daar is en behoefte daaraan om jong mense en volwassenes effektief op te lei. Hierdie situasie skep werklik uitdagings. Aan die kant van die opvoeders vereis dit unieke verandering deur nuwighede in te voer en unieke benaderings te ontwikkel, ten einde hierdie vermoëns te ontwikkel. Entrepreneurs is leiers. Om en leier te wees, is en vereiste vir entrepreneurskap. en Entrepreneur moet en leier wees ten om die finansiers, verskaffers, kliënte, konsultante, beroepslui en kontrakteurs aan te trek, hulle te behou en die meeste uit hulle te haal. Hy moet 'n leier wees om die beste uit homself te kry. Sommige entrepreneurs lei op so 'n manier dat hulle leierskap maklik waarneembaar en verstaanbaar is. Ander se leierskap is weer minder sigbaar of verstaanbaar, maar hulle is almal leiers. Daar word algemeen aanvaar dat leiers gebore word met leierskaptalent. Sommige beginsels van leierskap is reeds by geboorte aanwesig (Shefsky, 1994: 168), maar hierdie beginsels is geneig om die bestaan van leierskap te bepaal, maar nie die bestaan van leierskap talent nie. Mense kan opgelei word on leiers te wees. Leierskap kan ook in die skool aangeleer word. Ondernemende leiers ontwikkel deur perspektief te behou sodat hulle drome werklikheid word, deur te wete te kom hoekom hulle moet lei, deur doelwitte te stel en gefokus te bly. Soos enige vorm van entrepreneurskap tree hulle eties korrek op om finansieel suksesvol te wees. Kreatiwiteit en entrepreneurskap skep 'n uitdaging en is stimulerend. Intuïsie is die bydraende faktor tot kreatiwiteit. Sodra die voornemende leier skep, haal hy sy idee uitmekaar uit. Hy analiseer hoe lank dit sal duur voor sy idee ontwikkel, wat die risiko is en waaroor die mark geleenthede gaan. Hy maak 'n waardebepaling van moontlike suksesse of mislukkings. Hy is ingestelop kreatiwiteit, is ondersoekend en weetgierig. Hy doen alles in sy vemoë om 'n belangrike rol te speel om die wêreld 'n beter plek te maak. Klem is gelê op die eienskappe, vaardighede, rolle en funksies van die voornemende leier en watter rol leierskap en kreatiwiteit in entrepreneurskap speel.

Crafting and stimulating service innovation is considered a main research priority and remains a challenge for service providers. One suggested component of stimulating service innovation is customer creativity. Customers who adapt, modify and transform services or products to better suit themselves are increasingly being recognized as a source of competitive value and innovation. It has been proposed that understanding and supporting the customer’s value creating practices is the key to creating and sustaining value over time in health care. Health services directly address a customer’s well-being and have a significant impact on his or her quality of life. In these types of services, the service outcome is highly dependent on the activities of the individual customer. Health care services often require customers to participate extensively, over long periods of time, with limited support and control. Health services also stretch far beyond the particular service setting into the customer’s daily life. While research, policy, and legislation have all emphasized the active role of health care customers, such customers have traditionally had few opportunities to design their health care services. Nevertheless, health care customers solve health-related problems and engage in self-care and medical decision-making on a day-to-day basis, although this creativity is often unknown to the service provider. To understand how health care customers can enable service innovation, this thesis seeks to conceptualize and investigate the concept of customer creativity in health care. The thesis focuses on customer creativity, not only as an outcome, but also as a dynamic and contextualized process that can be enhanced. The thesis combines insights from health care research with service and innovation research to provide build a framework for health care customer creativity. Building on five papers, the research develops an understanding for health care customer creativity. The individual papers are based on systematic literature reviews as well as empirical data in the form of customers’ ideas for service innovation collected through diaries. The results of the thesis suggest that despite the negative nature of the service, health care customers are creative. Given the opportunity, health care customers can provide creative ideas and solutions on a multitude of aspects, both within and outside the health care setting. This provides the potential to view the health care experience through the customers’ eyes and take part in their creativity in spheres where the service providers have not traditionally had any access. This thesis contributes to the literature by providing a framework for health care customer creativity that recognizes the concept as a complex interplay of factors operating at the individual, contextual, and situational levels. The proposed framework specifies the health care specific factors upon which customer creativity depends, with the intention of positing potential research directions and developing an enriched theory of health care customer creativity.

Although flow theory (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975; being 'in the zone') arose from early observations of artists, experimental research of creative flow is lacking, particularly in the visual arts. Assumptions are made about the universality of flow in all domains; however creativity is a uniquely complex domain which may have different antecedents, experiences, and consequences related to flow. This thesis focuses on potential mechanisms and effects of feedback/goal ambiguity and the sense of control that are thought essential to flow but which have unclear relationships to creativity. Using an experimental simulation of the visual creative process, the creative mental synthesis task (Finke & Slayton, 1988), four experiments were conducted. The role of perceptual feedback (sketching) to potentially disambiguate limited mental imagery feedback, or to offload cognitive load, was explored. Also inspected were the impacts of expectation-outcome incongruence, perceived task difficulty, and access to conscious choice vs. constraint. Results show sketching significantly increased flow by decreasing perceived task difficulty, though this effect was independent of cognitive load. Factors potentially influencing perceived difficulty were explored in relation to feedback ambiguity variables such as expectation-outcome discrepancies and mental imagery vividness. Choice did not significantly affect flow, but did decrease expectation-outcome discrepancy, suggesting total autonomy and control are not essential for flow development, but choice may affect how creative ideas are selected. These experimental results were compared with fine artist and commercial designer interviews, suggesting flow in visual creativity may require adaptability, tolerance of uncertainty, and interaction with perceptual feedback to resolve ambiguity. Flow was, as theorised, strongly related to affect improvement and self-rated creativity; however no direct links to higher externally-rated or objective creativity measures were found. Although flow does not directly enhance creativity, it and factors related to it (e.g., sketching, affect) may have an indirect motivating influence which could enhance mastery over time.

Trabalho de Projecto apresentado para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Ensino do Inglês
This project is the result of an attempt to answer the question “Can Creative Writing Be Taught?” proposed by Francine Prose (2007), in the first chapter of her book Reading Like a Writer. It also aims to show the difficulties of implementing such a project in the classroom, due to factors such as lack of time, the pressure of teaching a very tight syllabus, and the working conditions students and teachers have in order to succeed. In order to implement the project, a series of activities was set up. Through music, paintings, drawings, hand paintings and other materials, the students produced words and simple sentences, which were enlarged so as to become complex sentences and paragraphs. Each piece of material was prepared bearing in mind the ideas the students had produced during the previous session, so that a connection could be established between all elements. The main purpose of these strategies was to lead the students into writing a story. Lastly, this project aims at showing how the different creative writing activities contributed to a greater awareness of individual writing errors and error-correction, improving the students‟ writing skill as a whole.

Interviews with Swedish and Ugandan creatives are the main data sources of this work, as well as my own reflections while spending eight weeks in Uganda. The purpose of this project was to compare and resonate on cultural differences between my own previous experiences and what I experienced in Uganda during my stay and how such cultural differences may affects creativity. The results show that abundance and scarcity have a direct connection to creative thinking. The creative process is dependent on a large knowledge base, but also on the ability to think outside the box. The colonization of Africa still affect the way Ugandans experience their capability to control their lives and future, and thereby the development of the country. Artistic individuals, no matter religious or not, are all experiencing spiritual, or magical, connections when creating. Religion and culture have a large impact on creativity. The creative personality is based on a complex mind of paradoxical traits. Blocked creatives can be un-blocked by learning how to nurture their artist.

The research deals with creativity as philosophical and psychological category. Human activity only then becomes creativity, when it contributes to the development of a human personality, human culture, and most importantly – an individual spirituality.
Дослідження стосується творчості як філософської та психологічної категорії. Людська діяльність лише тоді стає творчістю, коли вона сприяє удосконаленню особистості людини, людської культури, а найголовніше – духовності людини.
Исследование касается творчества как философской и психологической категории. Человеческая деятельность только тогда становится творчеством, когда она способствует развитию личности человека, человеческой культуры, а главное – духовности человека.

While there is evidence of early creativity in children’s colorful drawings, original stories, and elaborate games of pretense, conducting research on the topic of children’s creativity can be challenging. In particular, the most commonly used measures of creativity have been shown to be problematic, particularly with young children. Therefore, an important goal of this dissertation was to develop appropriate laboratory tasks for assessing children’s creativity. At Time 1, 75 4- and 5-year-old children (38 boys, 37 girls) were asked to complete two new measures of creativity – a storytelling task and a drawing task. In addition, the children were interviewed about whether they engaged in elaborated role play (i.e., pretending in which children imagine and act out the part of a character on a regular basis). The results indicated that the laboratory measures of creativity were both related to engaging in elaborated role play as well as related to each other (independent of age and language ability), suggesting that the measures were effective in assessing young children’s creativity, and that they were specifically associated with elaborated role play. Another goal of this dissertation was to examine the continuity of individual differences in creativity from preschool age to middle school age with a longitudinal follow-up assessment of the children from Time 1 approximately eight years later when they were 11 to 14 years old. 41 children (21 boys, 20 girls) participated at Time 2 and completed a large battery of creativity measures, including tasks similar to the laboratory measures at Time 1 as well as additional measures that varied in whether they included social content. Contrary to hypotheses, laboratory measures of creativity at Time 1 did not predict any of the measures of creativity at Time 2. However, the creativity ratings of the role play characters from Time 1 were related to all of the indicators of creativity eight years later. In addition, having an imaginary companion at Time 2 was concurrently related to several measures of creativity. These results suggest that elaborated role play might be particularly relevant for children’s developing creativity. This dissertation includes previously published co-authored material.

L'objectiu d'aquesta tesi és obrir la caixa negra de la creativitat i millorar el coneixement de com s'ha de gestionar en les organitzacions. De fet, gestionar la creativitat a les organitzacions requereix no tan sols comprendre què és la creativitat i els mecanismes que permeten que la creativitat aflori i es transformi en productes comercialitzables, sinó també identificar les pràctiques que poden ajudar les empreses a atraure i a retenir els qui tenen més bon potencial creatiu. A aquest efecte, s'estructura en cinc capítols. El capítol 1 examina la metodologia de la tesi i descriu detalladament les preguntes, el procés i el disseny de la recerca així com la industria cultural com a camp de recerca. El capítol 2 és un estudi conceptual que revisa la bibliografia sobre la creativitat, cercant d'aclarir les definicions. L'estudi analitza 94 definicions seleccionades després de consultar 50 llibres i 462 articles publicats en journals de gestió entre 1990 i 2008, i hi aplica la metodologia d'anàlisi de continguts. Els resultats assenyalen que, en general, són d'acceptació general sis categories conceptuals de creativitat: la creació, la síntesi, el resultat, la modificació, les interaccions i la implicació (engagement). S'analitzen amb profunditat totes aquestes categories conceptuals i els seus elements definidors. El capítol 3 busca identificar els mecanismes socials que permeten disciplinar una passió creativa i convertir-la en productes culturals que arribin al mercat. Proposa un marc teòric multinivell, centrat en dos conjunts de mecanismes: (1) els rols que encenen la creativitat (creativity-igniting roles), que activen l'esforç creatiu, i (2) les relacions que optimitzen la creativitat (creativity-enhancing relationships), que posen en relació els creadors individuals amb les firmes creatives. L'estudi es basa en la teoria de rols i en una orientació a la coordinació basada en els rols (Bechky, 2006), i agrupa quatre rols essencials que engloben les activitats bàsiques del procés de convertir la passió creativa en productes culturals: creador, emprenedor, integrador i patrocinador. S'utilitza la perspectiva relacional de l'activitat creativa per manifestar la importància de les relacions que optimitzen la creativitat en posar en relació els creadors individuals amb les empreses dedicades a la producció de productes culturals. Els mecanismes socials s'il·lustren amb tres casos d'estudi d'empreses que pertanyen a sectors culturals que segueixen diferents orientacions a l'hora de convertir la passió en productes. El capítol 4 se centra bàsicament en les pràctiques de gestió dels recursos humans (HRM) que permeten a les empreses atraure i retenir els empleats creatius. En conseqüència, aquest estudi proposa un marc conceptual i analitza el rol que juguen dues variables, la identitat ("qui som com a organització" - Albert i Whetten, 1985) i la imatge ("com pensen els membres de l'organització que la veuen els de fora" - Dutton et al. 1994), a l'hora d'influir en la relació entre les pràctiques de gestió dels recursos humans i la rotació. En concret, mostra que tant la identitat com la imatge poden augmentar o reduir la incidència de les pràctiques de gestió dels recursos humans sobre la rotació interna i externa. El capítol 5 conclou la tesi resumint, connectant i interpretant categories conceptuals resultat empírics. Per a concloure, proposa un marc teòric multinivell sobre com la creativitat ocorre en les organitzacions incloent tant els mecanismes socials com les practiques de gestió de recursos humans.
El objetivo de esta tesis es abrir la caja negra de la creatividad y mejorar el conocimiento de cómo se debe gestionar en las organizaciones. Conseguir este objetivo requiere primero, aclarar qué es la creatividad y cuáles son los elementos que la constituyen; segundo, investigar los mecanismos específicos que permiten que la creatividad se desarrolle y sea disciplinada y transformada en un producto comercializable y tercero, identificar las prácticas que ayuden a las empresas a retener talentos creativos. A tal efecto, esta tesis se estructura en cinco capítulos. El capítulo 1 examina la metodología de la tesis y describe en detalle las preguntas, el proceso y el diseño de investigación, así como la industria cultural como campo de investigación. El capítulo 2 revisa la bibliografía sobre la creatividad e investiga distintas definiciones de este término para aclarar sus categorías conceptuales: de hecho, a pesar de los numerosos intentos de definir la creatividad, falta claridad sobre su definición. Por lo tanto, el estudio analiza 94 definiciones seleccionadas tras consultar 50 libros y 462 artículos publicados en journals de gestión entre 1990 y 2008, y les aplica la metodología de análisis de contenidos. Los resultados señalan que, en general, son de aceptación general seis categorías conceptuales de creatividad: la creación, la síntesis, el resultado, la modificación, las interacciones y el engagement. Se analizan en profundidad todas estas categorías conceptuales y sus elementos definidores. El capítulo 3 busca identificar los mecanismos sociales que permiten disciplinar una pasión creativa y convertirla en productos culturales que lleguen al mercado. Avanza un marco teórico multinivel, centrado en dos conjuntos de mecanismos: (1) los roles que encienden la creatividad (creativity-igniting roles), que activan el esfuerzo creativo, y (2) las relaciones que optimizan la creatividad (creativity-enhancing relationships), que ponen en relación a los creadores individuales con las firmas creativas. El estudio se basa en la teoría de roles y en una orientación a la coordinación basada en los roles (Bechky, 2006), y agrupa cuatro roles esenciales que engloban las actividades básicas del proceso de convertir la pasión creativa en productos culturales: creador, emprendedor, integrador y patrocinador. Se usa la perspectiva relacional de la actividad creativa para manifestar la importancia de las relaciones que optimizan la creatividad al poner en relación a los creadores individuales con las empresas dedicadas a la producción de productos culturales. Los mecanismos sociales se ilustran mediante tres casos de estudio de empresas pertenecientes a sectores culturales que siguen distintas orientaciones para convertir la pasión en productos. El capítulo 4 se centra básicamente en las prácticas de gestión de los recursos humanos (HRM) que permiten a las empresas atraer y retener a sus empleados creativos. El capítulo propone un marco conceptual y analiza el rol que juegan dos variables, la identidad ("quiénes somos como organización" - Albert y Whetten, 1985) y la imagen ("cómo piensan los miembros de la organización que la ven los de fuera" - Dutton et al. 1994), a la hora de influir en la relación entre las prácticas de gestión de los recursos humanos y la rotación. En concreto, muestra que tanto la identidad como la imagen pueden aumentar o reducir la incidencia de las prácticas de gestión de los recursos humanos sobre la rotación interna y externa. El capítulo 5 concluye la tesis resumiendo, conectando e interpretando categorías conceptuales y resultados empíricos. Para concluir, propone un marco teórico multinivel sobre cómo la creatividad ocurre en las organizaciones incluyendo tanto los mecanismos sociales como las prácticas de gestión de recursos humanos.
The objective of this dissertation is to open up the black box of creativity and improve the understanding on how it can be managed in organizations. Fulfilling this purpose requires first, clarifying what creativity is and the elements that constitute it; second, investigating the specific mechanisms that allow creativity to take place and be disciplined and transformed into marketable products and third, identifying the practices that can help companies retain creative employees. Accordingly, this research has been structured in five chapters. Chapter one overviews the dissertation's methodology and describes in detail the research questions, process, and design, as well as cultural industry as an empirical setting. Chapter two reviews the literature on creativity and examines different definitions of the term, in order to provide clarity: in fact, despite the numerous attempts to define creativity, an agreement on its definition is still to emerge. Therefore, it performs a content analysis on 94 definitions collected on 50 books and 462 articles published in selected management journals from 1990 to 2008. The results suggest that six conceptual categories on creativity enjoy general support: creation, synthesis, output, modification, interactions, and engagement. All these conceptual categories and their defining elements are analyzed in depth. Chapter three seeks to identify the social mechanisms that allow disciplining a creative passion and translating it into cultural products that reach the market. It develops theory, by advancing a multi-level theoretical framework, which focuses on two sets of mechanisms: (1) creativity-igniting roles that energize a creative endeavour, and (2) creativity-enhancing relationships that link individual creators with creative firms. The chapter builds on role theory and a role-based approach to coordination (Bechky, 2006), bringing together four essential roles that encompass core activities in the process of translating creative passion into cultural products: creator, entrepreneur, integrator, and sponsor. The relational perspective to the creative activity is used to articulate the importance of creativity-enhancing relationships that bind individual creators with companies dedicated to the production of cultural products. The social mechanisms are illustrated with insights from three case studies of companies from cultural sectors that offer distinct approaches to translating passion into products. Chapter four is a study of the human resource management practices related to creative employees' retention in a creativity-driven organization. Based on one in-depth case study pertaining to the fashion and design industry, it explores the link "HRM practices-turnover", providing evidence of the role that two variables, namely, identity ("who we are as an organization" - Albert & Whetten, 1985) and image ("how organization members think outsiders see the organization" - Dutton et al. 1994), play in affecting this relationship. Chapter five concludes the dissertation by summarizing, linking and interpreting conceptual categories and empirical results. Finally, it advances a multilevel theoretical framework on how creativity happens in organizations, including both social mechanisms and HRM practices.

Can a computer truly be creative? This is the philosophical question that defines this thesis. It is suggested that the only way for this question to be answered in the affirmative, is to thoroughly investigate the cognitive nature of creativity. First the thesis proposes a definition of creativity based on cognitive research, human intuition and artificial creativity debates. This definition accounts for not only that thecreative product has to be both novel and useful, but that the creative agent has to exceed a certain level of cognitive maturity (in thesis referred to as - intelligence) and be aware of the creative process and context. The framework for the creative process isfounded on the psychologically supported notion of a circle of divergent and convergent thinking, and a cognitive machinery of conceptual blending. It is in the framework of the creative process that the criterion for the creative productis generated. In the circle of divergent and convergent thinking and through conceptual blending, novel ideas are first generated, then evaluated. For this to be possible thecreative agent has to exceed a certain level of cognitive abilities, and in order to properly evaluate the product, it also needs to have awareness of the process and context to beable to evaluate the product. A second part of the thesis looks at problems with AI and what that means for the approaches to artificial creativity. By using the reasoning behind the definition, the possibility to create truly creative computers are proposed and discussed. In the line of the definition a conceptual suggested approach is presented, that if satisfied it is the author’s suggestion that the artificial system should be deemed "creative". The artificial agent has far to go before it is equal in cognitive maturity to human intellect, and the capacity for awareness of the process and context is debatable. Genetic algorithms, randomness and perception is presented as possibilities for artificial agents to create novelty, and a multi layered processing system build on learning through perception, and evaluation build on key concepts from context and statistics of previous knowledge, is introduced as possible means of creating artificial creativity.

Research and development (R&D) innovation has become an important competitive advantage that is essential to the biopharma industry and critical to drug development (Bennani, 2012; Cuatrecasas, 2006; Douglas, et al., 2010; Garnier, 2008; Hine & Kapeleris, 2006; McKelvey, 2008; Pisano, 2006, 2010). Cultivating R&D innovation carries a distinct challenge of balancing between fostering conditions for creativity while at the same time managing for technical, scientific and operational efficiencies. However, the trend in the industry is toward using more process management techniques focused on formalization, standardization, control and efficiency in order to accelerate drug discovery efforts (Brown & Svenson, 1998; Cardinal, 2001; Cuatrecasas, 2006; Hine & Kaperleris, 2006; Johnstone et al., 2011; Paul et al., 2010; Scannell et al., 2012; Sewing et al., 2008; Ullman & Boutellier, 2008).

This study was designed to explore how early drug discovery scientists experience creativity in a highly coordinated and managed work environment. The research questions were as follows: How do scientists working in the early discovery phases of the R&D pipeline experience creativity; and how does a highly managed and coordinated work environment influence scientists’ experience of creativity? The basis for understanding their experiences was captured through detailed stories and reflections about their personal background, early influences and professional experiences as a scientist.

The sample included 10 early drug discovery scientists who work for either a pharmaceutical, biotech or bio-pharmaceutical company based in the United States of America (USA). A basic qualitative study was conducted with in-depth interviews as the primary method of data collection. Data were analyzed using multiple iterations of coding, describing and classifying to interpret what creativity means, how scientists experience creativity within their work environment and what factors influence this experience. Conclusions and implications about what creativity means, how scientists experience creativity and the various dynamics that shape this experience are presented in the following pages.

This thesis explores children's and teachers' perspectives on creativity, and its implementation, within one primary school classroom in Scotland. The data collection phase of the research employed an ethnographic approach, involving four and a half months of fieldwork in the primary school classroom. Data were generated from participant observation/informal conversations with children and teachers and one round of semi-structured interviews with twenty-five children (aged eleven to twelve) and two teachers. Creativity within primary education has been mainly studied through psychological research, which is mainly based on theories of developmental psychology. Such theories view creativity solely as an individual trait. Despite recognition of the importance of sociocultural issues to the flourishing of children's creativity, the study of their collaborative creativity has been neglected - particularly in relation to socio-cultural power dynamics. This thesis specifically analyses the balance between individual and collective creativity in the primary classroom, examines how collaborative creativity can acknowledge childhood diversity, and poses questions about how we include children with differing and complex identities in creative processes. Furthermore, this research has been carried out in Scotland, within the context of a fairly new curriculum, the Curriculum for Excellence. This curriculum has been viewed by some as a progressive, modern and motivating curriculum that enables children's autonomy, and by others as one that has been highly influenced by accountability and performativity regimes, which leave limited space for children's and teachers' autonomy. This thesis examines how the Curriculum for Excellence is interpreted in everyday practice and the extent to which it enables the cultivation of children's creativity. The thesis does so by shedding light on the practical interconnections between children's and teachers' agency, structural enablers/barriers, and cultural processes. The findings of this study show that children perceive, perform and embody creativity not only as an individual trait, but also as a collaborative process. However, the findings also show that collaborative creativity entails many complexities and that cultural barriers to creativity may emerge when power among people (children and teachers) operates in ways that create cultures of exclusion. The thesis concludes that the multiple identities of the Curriculum for Excellence, its multiple interpretations, and lack of coherence regarding what is expected of teachers, leads to a blurred landscape of implementation. The thesis argues that lack of a clear plan, strategy and framework for enabling creativity inhibits the founding principles of the Curriculum for Excellence from being achieved. The thesis also argues that environmental and structural barriers within the research setting inhibit the flourishing of children's creativity, but that the structural barriers can sometimes be overcome through the construction of enabling cultures. The thesis is able to define enabling cultures as cultures that value diversity, promote inclusion, and view space not as static, but as a dynamic process. In so doing, the findings of this study emphasise the interconnected importance of: viewing creativity as an individual trait; perceiving creativity as a collaborative process; and thinking in spatial terms, for example, in ways that create the space for children to perceive, perform and embody creativity in their diverse, but equally valuable ways. This finding enables this study to argue that there is a need for future policies and curricula which promote and encourage greater flexibility in teaching and learning practices, in order to enhance children's and teachers' agency and thus allow them to collaboratively create the types of enabling environments, originally envisaged by the Curriculum for Excellence, that will allow children's creativity to flourish.