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Taking Style On Board (or how to get used to the idea of creative adaptors and uncreative innovators)
Author(s) -
Talbot R.J.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
creativity and innovation management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.148
H-Index - 60
eISSN - 1467-8691
pISSN - 0963-1690
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8691.00066
Subject(s) - creativity , style (visual arts) , field (mathematics) , psychology , work (physics) , sociology , social psychology , visual arts , engineering , art , mathematics , mechanical engineering , pure mathematics
The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential impact of Kirton's Adaption‐Innovation Theory on our thinking about creativity, and consequently on the practices of researchers and trainers in this field. That people differ in their degree or level of creativity has long been established. Kirton's work asserts that people also differ in the manner in which they express their creativity—their style, and the KAI (the Kirton Adaption‐Innovation Inventory) measures a person's preferred style. In the literature, Style and Level of creativity are argued (and mostly shown) to be independent. It follows from this that Adaptors and Innovators are creative ( and uncreative) in different ways. It is suggested that much of the work in the creativity field has focused on the Innovative style of creativity. This paper describes research identifying differences in how Adaptors and Innovators view their creative products, looks at some possible implications for training, explores differences in preferred organisational climate between Adaptors and Innovators, and suggests a style‐neutral definition of creativity.