Title: Out-of-the-box creativity and risks: the propositions and future research directions

Authors: Birgit Verworn, Carmen Kobe

Addresses: Hochschule fur Technik und Wirtschaft, Dresden, Germany. ' Autonomous Systems Lab, ETH Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Switzerland

Abstract: Organisations increasingly try to encourage out-of-the-box creativity within their working environment as a prerequisite for radically new products and services. We suggest that the risks an employee perceives may either foster or hamper his or her out-of-the-box creative action, depending on how risks are perceived. Based on an integrative analysis of the existing theory and empirical findings, this paper proposes a framework of the risk-related prerequisites of |extreme| creative action. In particular, we integrate and combine the decision making and psychological literature to provide the foundation for future theory building and empirical research. We come to the conclusion that bringing together these two unrelated literature streams is a fruitful approach and a high level of creativity requires more research on the |threatening| and |thrilling| effects of risks. Besides making suggestions for research, we derive possible managerial implications from the framework.

Keywords: out-of-the-box creativity; risks; working environment; risk perception; thrills; threats; decision making; psychology.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPD.2010.033961

International Journal of Product Development, 2010 Vol.11 No.3/4, pp.256 - 271

Published online: 05 Jul 2010 *

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