Management of Extreme Situations

9Creativity under Constraint: A Management Sciences Perspective

9.1. Introduction

Creativity as a process of generating and selecting new, useful and achievable ideas is paradoxical in nature. On the one hand, the creative process should be unstructured, open and unconstrained ample resources, with time and space for ideas to emerge and mature (Amabile 1996; Shalley et al. 2004). To self-express, people’s creativity would require a setting protected from outside influences, comfortable and in a fascinating environment, long incubation periods, a recurrent rhythm of activities, access to quality and abundant information and many connections with colleagues in various disciplines (Csikszentmihalyi 2006). On the other hand, creative practitioners develop structured methods to channel creativity into a constrained space and time period (Osborn 1953). For many researchers, the creativity of individuals and teams is enhanced by resource, time and procedural constraints (Baer and Oldham 2006; Ohly and Fritz 2010). Similarly, to solve problems that integrate many constraints, creators and inventors must break out of existing conceptual frameworks and make new associations that create disruptions on the principle of bissociation (Koestler 1964). There is, therefore, an underlying paradox in creativity between freedom and constraint, two elements that seem essential to promoting individuals’ creativity. However, the current economic and technological environment, driven by rapid change ...