Is there such a thing as a creative personality? Indeed. While creative genius is rare—whether in science (Stephen Hawking), the performing arts (Martha Graham), or business (Steve Jobs)—most people have some of the characteristics shared by exceptionally creative people. The more of these characteristics we have, the higher our creative potential. Innovation is one of the top organizational goals for leaders, with the facets of:

1. Intelligence and Creativity Intelligence is related to creativity. Smart people are more creative because they are better at solving complex problems. However, they may also be more creative because they have greater “working memory,” that is, they can recall more information related to the task at hand.67 Along the same lines, recent research in the Netherlands indicates that an individual’s high need for cognition (desire to learn) is correlated with greater creativity.68

2. Personality and Creativity The Big Five personality trait of openness to experience (see Chapter 5) correlates with creativity, probably because open individuals are less conformist in behavior and more divergent in thinking.69 Other traits of creative people include proactive personality, self-confidence, risk taking, tolerance for ambiguity, and perseverance.70 Hope, self-efficacy (belief in your capabilities), and positive affect also predict an individual’s creativity.71 Furthermore, research in China suggests that people with high core self-evaluations are better able than others to maintain creativity in negative situations.72 Perhaps counterintuitively, some research supports the “mad genius” theory that some people with mental illness are wildly creative partially due to their psychopathology; history certainly provides examples, such as Vincent van Gogh, John Forbes Nash, and others. However, the converse isn’t true—people who are creative may have less psychopathology as a group than the general population.73

3. Expertise and Creativity Expertise is the foundation for all creative work and thus is the single most important predictor of creative potential. For example, film writer, producer, and director Quentin Tarantino spent his youth working in a video rental store, where he built up an encyclopedic knowledge of movies. The expertise of others is important, too. People with larger social networks have greater exposure to diverse ideas and informal access to the expertise and resources of others.74

4. Ethics and Creativity Although creativity is linked to many desirable individual characteristics, it is not correlated with ethicality. People who cheat may actually be more creative than those who behave ethically, according to recent research. It may be that dishonesty and creativity can both stem from a rule-breaking desire.75

Most of us have creative potential we can learn to apply, but as important as creative potential is, by itself it is not enough. We need to be in an environment where creative potential can be realized. Of the many environmental factors, perhaps most important is motivation. If you aren’t motivated to be creative, it is unlikely you will be. Intrinsic motivation, or the desire to work on something because it’s interesting, exciting, satisfying, and challenging (discussed in more detail in Chapter 7), correlates fairly strongly with creative outcomes.76 However, it is also valuable to work in an environment that rewards and recognizes creative work. A study of health care teams found that team creativity translated into innovation only when the climate actively supported innovation.77 The organization should foster the free flow of ideas, including providing fair and constructive judgment. Freedom from excessive rules also encourages creativity; employees should have the freedom to decide what work is to be done and how to do it. One study in China revealed that both structural empowerment (in which the structure of the work unit allows sufficient employee freedom) and psychological empowerment (which lets the individual feel personally enabled to decide) were related to employee creativity.78 However, research in Slovenia found that creating a competitive climate where achievement at any cost is valued will stymie creativity.79

Teams matter to creativity too. As we will learn in Chapter 10, more work today is being done in teams, and many people believe diversity will increase team creativity. Past research has suggested that diverse teams are not more creative. More recently, however, one study of Dutch teams revealed that when team members were explicitly asked to understand and consider the point of view of the other team members (an exercise called perspective taking), diverse teams were more creative than those with less diversity.80 Leadership might make the difference. One study of 68 Chinese teams reported that diversity was positively related to team creativity only when the team’s leader was inspirational and instilled members with confidence.81