Creativity: The Core of the NDGiFTS Project

By Tiffany Jameson

Reviewed by Susan O'Malley, Synthyche Jennings & Anita Scott

Creativity is one of the most complex concepts to define with a recent review of academic literature uncovering 100 unique definitions (Said-Metwaly, 2017). These definitions covered various areas, including:

• Cognitive processes associated with creativity
• Personal characteristics of creative individuals
• Creative products or outcomes
• Interaction between the creative individual and the context or environment (Said-Metwaly, 2017, p. 241).

The variety of definitions acknowledge that all factors that promote or inhibit creativity are considered within the meaning (Thompson & Lordan, 1999). To view creativity through one lens, like divergent thinking, discounts application, and motivation of creativity versus the act of creating thoughts (Said-Metwaly et al., 2017).

Creativity is also a process that requires identifying a “problem” then requiring and evaluating the feasibility of those solutions (Boot et al., 2017). An individual must also have the motivation to turn existing knowledge into new knowledge through this process (Amabile, 1996 as cited by Boot et al., 2017).

The Process of Creativity

Creativity itself is a process of preparation, the incubation (idea formation), illumination (how to implement), and verification. Individuals with ADHD appear to be more generally engaged during the idea formation stage (Boot et al., 2017). In contrast, autistic individuals enjoy breaking down ideas in extreme detail for execution using their “exceptional memory, meticulously accurate representation or rule-following” (Roth, 2020, p. 498). Autistics have been found to generate more novel ideas (Best et al., 2015). We believe this is a benefit of their outlook and directly related to creativity (Amabile, 1996).

Regardless, the individual must have the motivation to be creative, and this usually involves special interests, or as Hunter et al. (2012) refers to many of the KSAOs (Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and other competencies) identified in their interactionist model of innovative achievement. Winter-Messiers (2007 as cited by Goldfarb et al., 2019) describe special interests as “those passions that capture the mind, heart, time and attention of individuals with AS [autism spectrum], providing the lens through which they view the world” (p. 142). This is one of many examples of the characteristic traits of neurodiverse already available as creative potential for employers. It is up to the employers to implement the contextual moderators we will discuss below to allow this creative potential to become an innovation.

Creativity Leads to Innovation

Too often, innovation is used synonymously with creativity. The fact is creativity allows innovation to happen. Paul Hobcraft describes innovation as “the fundamental way the company brings constant value to their customer’s business or life, and consequently their shareholders and stakeholders.” Hobcraft’s definition aligns with how we define the value proposition of having creative employees. These employees provide novel ideas and approaches that enable innovation to happen. To stay alive as a business, you must innovate. To innovate, you must have creative team members. As a famous movie once said, “if you build it, they will come.” This is also the case with creative employees. Nurturing an environment where each employee is comfortable in their skin and has the autonomy to use their strengths to address challenges, is the only way to access this creative side. 

Creativity Requires Contextual Factors

The figure below describes the interactionist model of innovative achievement (Hunter et al., 2012), and it is developed from the human resource talent acquisition perspective. Many neurodiverse individuals have the Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Others (KSAOs) to offer the creative potential to an organization. The challenging part for organizations is the contextual moderators necessary to allow the creative potential to evolve into innovative output. Researchers identified that in the appropriate environment, creativity ability is distinct from the more general cognitive ability (Hunter et al., 2012). Findings also support that personality exerts sizable effects on creative achievement (Hunter et al., 2012). Hunter et al. (2012) recommends attracting and retain creative potential, elevated levels of autonomy are necessary, as is tolerance for risk-taking, and the encouragement of diversity of expertise.

Climate of Inclusion

Expanding on the importance of the contextual moderators identified by Hunter et al. (2012) is beyond the scope of this paper. For this section, the focus will be placed on climate and team processes. A climate of inclusion is a perception by employees that the organization values diversity through the promotion and implementation of diversity management systems (Li et al., 2019). The critical word to note with climate is that is the perception of the employee. Research has also found that inclusion itself is a perception, or personal feeling, an individual has within their environment (Goodall, 2019). Taken together, an inclusive climate is difficult to quantify but essential for all employees to feel included.

Team Processes: The Need for Cognitive Diversity

Team processes are another important concept when it comes to enabling creative potential to create innovative output. When it comes to diversity in teams, it once again comes down to perception. Generally, when people differ, they quickly form categorization with a team resulting in sub-team and inter-team bias disrupting the flow of creativity (Rahmi & Indarti, 2019). Usually, classification occurs through visual, or surface-level diversities. Here, we aim to discuss deep-level diversity, such as cognitive diversity. Adapting Vegt and Onne’s (2003, as cited in Rahmi & Indarti, 2019) definition, “internal characteristics of a team such as differed way of thinking, knowledge, skills, view of the world, and beliefs about what is right and wrong” (p. 300). Teams will benefit from cognitive diversity when the appropriate climate is present, a norm of open-mindedness, and the shared perception of team members (Rahimi & Indarti, 2019).

There is another important piece to consider when moving from creative potential to innovative output. Described clearly in Theodore Levitt’s (2002) article, “Creativity Is Not Enough.” Approaching problems with novel solutions may be a strength of one individual, but as Levitt writes, “What is often lacking is not creativity in the idea-creating sense but innovation in the action-producing sense, i.e., putting ideas to work.” We believe this is where the importance of team processes comes into play. Team processes, designed to enable team members the “space” to look at a problem differently, will require a path to execution. As we have previously discussed, some neurodivergent individuals may find the creation of the path to execution difficult to organize. A strong team will realize the strengths of one member, and compliment with the strengths of another. These “cognitive diversities” will allow the varies stages of idea formation to planning, to selling within the organization, then to implementation. Without different skills within a team, the cycle of an idea will never begin and the novel idea with fail without ever being tried.

Dual-process Theory of Creativity

For our purposes, we have selected to view this through a lens of dual-process perspective on creative thought. Adopting a dual-process meta-theoretical perspective allows for exploration of the relations between associative and executive processes, and the roles of intuitive and analytical thought, in the genesis and evaluation of new and useful ideas (see Barr, 2017). This approach is amenable to understanding creativity from a domain-general perspective, with more specific models and theories framed in dual-process terms possible to understand creative cognition within domains (e.g. dance, science, writing). Barr (2017) explains this best as he asks, “would one expect the same cognitive processes to subserve both an improvised interpretative dance and the genesis of a novel scientific theory?” (p. 24). Creativity can be construed as applying differential interpretive lenses and processing mechanisms on what one feels, hears, and sees. These processes are a result of a mixture of associative and executive processes, and research is unraveling the interplay between brain regions associated with these types of thought.

Given the unique neural dynamics apparent in neurodiverse individuals, it is reasonable to expect that they exhibit unique cognitive activity amenable to creativity. We also believe that the individual must be in a safe and nurturing environment allowing the natural creative processes of this group to happen, and not be stifled by rigid and psychologically unsafe environments. In other words, the individual must experience intrinsic motivation to innovate (Said-Metwaly, 2017), as previously discussed, the contextual factors provide the ability to take neurodiverse creative potential and transform it into innovation.

There are many shared characteristics of neurodiverse individuals. Drozda and Roblin (2020) outlined above the comorbidity between neurodiversity and executive functioning. Presented also is the comorbidity between neurodiversity and anxiety (Seaward and Srinivasan, 2020). Boot et al. (2017) highlights the attention-focus challenges of many neurodiverse individuals and explains “The defocused processing of task-unrelated information during creative tasks may activate uncommon associations, resulting in original combinations of information” (p. 1). Under the assumption that both executive functioning may be an area of traditional deficit and anxiety may be increased in the neurodiverse population, we are recommending three research studies.

References can be found on the main NDGiFTS report: www.NDGiFTSMovement.com