Editor’s note: Kea Wheeler is senior project director at market research firm Morpace, Farmington Hills, Mich.
During the week of June 15, 2015 I had the privilege of going to the Creative Education Foundation’s (CEF) creative problem solving conference (CPSI) in Buffalo, New York. This was my second time attending the conference and I worked on honing my skills in the CPS creative problem solving model. Every time I use this model, or conduct training on the CPS model, it never ceases to amaze me the types of solutions that are imagined. Time and time again the process makes my colleagues and I realize that yes, we are creative!
If researchers can be creative, why can’t anyone be creative? I believe they can be but that is not always consensus. There is inevitably a project that comes up that requests “creative consumers” for a qualitative session and asks for a battery of questions to screen for creativity. Before going to CPSI, I thought I understood what a creative type was – an artist, a writer or a designer. But since attending CPSI, I learned to clarify with the client who they truly want to attend the discussion.
Why look for only “creative” types?
According to Dr. Gerard Puccio, the creator of the FOURSIGHT measure, there are four mental processes that are essential for innovation and creativity – clarifying, ideating, development and implementation. There are people who have stronger preferences for one of these mental processes:
- Clarifiers revel in exploring challenges and opportunities, and are all about the details and finding a clear definition of an issue.
- Ideators enjoy “big picture” thinking and stretching their imagination with a variety of possibilities.
- Developers like to take an idea into a fully-realized solution.
- Implementers enjoy seeing structured ideas turn into tangible outcomes.
One may look at the preference for processes and believe the creative types are the ideators. Ideators can provide lots of ideas but are they going to be the concrete ideas you want or will their thoughts be too big picture to be actionable? If you want actionable ideas, perhaps a room full of clarifiers, developers and implementers is the way to go. However, the ideal room of participants is one that has a variety of people with different preferences for each of the mental processes. By only including one process, or the people who have a preference for one type of process, is not better than another.
Look for engaged consumers instead
So if recruitment should not focus on finding creative types, then what should it focus on? Engagement. Dr. Kathryn Jablokow, associate professor of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Design at Pennsylvania State University, was inspired by the works of Michael Kirton, Robert Sternberg and Teresa Amabile, to create the creative diversity model.” This model illustrates that creativity is diverse and includes four variables: creative level, creative style, motive and opportunity (Jablokow, 2013). Both Jablokow and Puccio agree that there is not one creative style that is better than another. That is good news for recruiting as all potential recruits are creative! However, Jablokow contests that motive and opportunity – two variables that I believe heavily factor into engagement – are also key to a person’s creative contribution. I believe these two factors may be the most important variables to consider for recruiting qualitative sessions.
Jablokow explains that people are motivated for certain reasons and without proper motivation one will not provide the highest level of energy to their creative contributions. The idea around the opportunity variable revolves around a person’s access to a problem or the person’s view of a problem as an opportunity to do something interesting, while others are indifferent to the idea. Having a room full of people who are creative but don’t truly want to participate in the topic or solving the problem causes the level of creativity to dwindle. With sometimes only two-to-three hours with participants, we as researchers need as much energy and excitement around a topic as possible to make a session a success. If you only look for creative types and have a topic that is uninspiring to them, you may get a very boring and uninspired group of participants.
So next time you’re faced with a project that calls for creative people, remember to take a deep breath and boldly explain to the client that everyone in the world is creative and what the project truly needs are engaged consumers. Now this may take some creativity to explain the research behind this theory in a manner that will enlighten the inevitable skeptic. But go ahead and be creative … I know you can!