Relief...contre la planéité

Après une trentaine d’années à étudier l’innovation en milieu de travail, une chercheuse de Harvard démythifie la créativité. Tous ces mythes peuvent facilement être transposés à l’éducation. …

Les six mythes sont :

1. La créativité jaillit de types créatifs

anyone with normal intelligence is capable of doing some degree of creative work. Creativity depends on a number of things: experience, including knowledge and technical skills; talent; an ability to think in new ways; and the capacity to push through uncreative dry spells. Intrinsic motivation [...] is especially critical.

2. L’argent aiguillonne la créativité

people put far more value on a work environment where creativity is supported, valued, and recognized. People want the opportunity to deeply engage in their work and make real progress.

3. On est plus créatif quand le temps presse

Creativity requires an incubation period; people need time to soak in a problem and let the ideas bubble up.

4. La peur stimule les découvertes

creativity is positively associated with joy and love and negatively associated with anger, fear, and anxiety. [...] people are happiest when they come up with a creative idea, but they’re more likely to have a breakthrough if they were happy the day before. There’s a kind of virtuous cycle. When people are excited about their work, there’s a better chance that they’ll make a cognitive association that incubates overnight and shows up as a creative idea the next day.

5. La compétition supplante la collaboration

The most creative teams are those that have the confidence to share and debate ideas. But when people compete for recognition, they stop sharing information. And that’s destructive because nobody in an organization has all of the information required to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

6. Une institution dégraissée est plus créative

Creativity suffers greatly during a downsizing. [...] Anticipation of the downsizing was even worse than the downsizing itself — people’s fear of the unknown led them to basically disengage from the work. More troubling was the fact that even five months after the downsizing, creativity was still down significantly.

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