Creativity is the most integral element which is inherent to the development of the successful business infrastructure of the enterprise. To be more exact, the creative approach is nowadays utilized in all spheres of the modern business creation and business governance.
Naturally, the most successful business projects have been launched following the doctrine of creativity. International technical giants Apple and Microsoft and the related companies have made their fortunes on the creativity solely. When the graduates of the university start seek their future employment, one of the most essential requirements of the effective job search is the necessity to have a “creative mind†and “critical thinkingâ€.
Although the importance of these concepts is really undisputable, various scholarly and business authorities failed to elaborate the unified definition of these concepts. Generally, creative thinking is defined as the ability of the individual to deviate from the traditional methods of the idea elaboration and as the capability to find unconventional methods to solve the problem. To be more exact, it is the set of new casually elaborated methods which are adjusted to each individual situation.
The Human Resources departments of the leading companies demonstrate the trend of “training†their employees to be creative. This practice is rather disputable and contested in the both business and scientific worlds. Scholars vigorously advocate or fervently oppose the idea that a human being can be trained to become creative. Both dissenting parties do seem to have persuasive arguments in their arsenals. The aim of this paper is to outline three main psychological approached aimed at providing the answer whether a human being can be trained to be creative and to evaluate the statement that the implementation of this scheme can ultimately result in the deterioration of the working environment of the company rather than in its enhancement.
The Schools of Psychology and Creativeness and their Evaluation
a) The Guilford’s Approach, Its Practical Implementation and Feasibility
One of the most outstanding psychologists, Joy Paul Guilford, was among the pioneers of the psychology who was totally assured that an individual employee of the company can in fact be effectively trained to practice the art of creativity. The main component of the creative mind, according to the principles of this author, is the ability of the individual to bring the element of novelty to everything in the course of his job obligations. To illustrate, if the person is a software engineer, he is automatically obliged to take the decisions which deviate from the traditional algorithms of software creation methods. However, these deviations must be inherently positive in their nature; the reflection of these deviations is the decrease in the time spent for the composition of the code and the resources required to launch a specific project.
According to the concept elaborated by Dr. Guilford, the person can be taught to complement almost any project with the element of the desired novelty. In order to succeed in the accomplishment of this task, the best strategy for the business owner or for the manager of the specifically regarded enterprise is to launch a set of initiatives aimed at encouraging the employees who performed excellently in terms of improving their creativity indicators. Naturally, the shortest way to succeed in this task is to guarantee a worthy monetary remuneration for everyone who demonstrates that he has succeeded in the personal enhancement of the traits which are the integral components of the creative thinking. However, under the approach advocated by this scholar, the shortest way to teach the person to be creative is to leave him or her to self-study. The set of studying methods will be eventually elaborated by the person himself or herself provided that no impediments are created by the business owner or by the managerial department of the company.
b) The Methods elaborated by Ellis Paul Torrance
The main successor of Joy Pau l Guilford was no less prolific in his scientific endeavors than his master and educator, the abovementioned professor Guilford. The main achievement of professor Torrance is the fact that he was the first scholar who contrived to elaborate the method of creativeness estimation. In other words, the following grading method was elaborated by him, and the following criteria are utilized to estimate whether the person is creative or not:
Fluency – this element is utilized to find out the number and actually the presence of the ideas generated by the individual to cope with the specific situation which necessarily requires the elements of critical thinking. To be more exact, this element is used to ascertain whether the person is in general capable of producing non-routine ideas for the resolution of a specific situation
Flexibility – this indicator is used to measure the relevance of the designed method of the task resolution. In other words, it has been designed to find out whether the invented method can be applied to the resolution of the similar tasks or it is customized to resolve the isolated task; it also analyzes how effectively the resolution of the task is exercised. Sometimes, it happens that the specific method is fluent but is not flexible at all. In this case, the previous method appears to be less energy and resource consuming than the invented one.
Originality and Elaboration – these figures are utilized to estimate how original is the invented method and how significantly it differs from the rest of the similarly devised techniques.
c) Â The techniques of professor Simonton
In contrast to the opinion of his colleagues, professor Simonton vigorously advocates the idea that people can be effectively taught to be creative, and specific pedagogues can provide effective training for them to ensure that they are professional enough to fulfill their industrial and professional functions.
The only element which is essential to teach the employee to be creative under the postulates of this approach is the high intellectual quality level of the recipient.
However, the method offered lacks both empirical and theoretical substantiation; therefore, its application and practical value is seriously disputed by the scientific communities globally and domestically.
Conclusions
Having recapitulated the main points of the posed questions, it can be ultimately inferred that nowadays, it is possible to enhance the creativity of the human resources of almost any company. However, this area of the corporate culture still remains an undiscovered field of study. Finally, the lack of empirical and theoretical researches makes it practically impossible to claim with certainty whether this policy will be beneficial for the companies which launch these policies or not.