Readings in Innovation

Adaptors and Innovators: Problem-solvers in Organizations

M. J. Kirton

Adaption-innovation theory defines and measures an individual’s style of decision making, problem solving, and, by implication, creativity (Kirton 1976, 1987a). The concept of level or capacity is explicitly and completely excluded from the definition of style, which is the individual’s characteristic manner of undertaking problem solving. Style includes the tendency either to accept the problem as consensually perceived or to view it, together sometimes with its own setting (or in other words “the paradigm”), as made up of processable parts of a problem to be solved. Style, therefore, also includes the kind of solution or cognitive production elicited by the problems in relation ...