Management Research Methodology: Integration of Principles, Methods and Techniques

APPENDIX A3

Some Research Findings on Creativity

Process creativity

Creative activity, according to Newell, Shah and Simon, (1962),^* is a special class of problem solving activity characterised by novelty, unconventionality, persistence, and difficulty in problem formulation. They emphasise the importance of richness of imagery and heuristics, but caution against basing conclusions on imagery systems. In addition to accumulating enormous knowledge, they recommend acquiring ‘additional clues’ to differentiate parts of the problem in order to be creative. Catherine (1938) found that the first stage of preparation was marked by frequent thought and idea changes, more frequently in the earlier part of preparation. With repetitions of an idea, modifications ...