Title: A creativity support tool for cognitive idea stimulation in entrepreneurial activities

Authors: Dominik Siemon; Susanne Robra-Bissantz

Addresses: Business Information Systems, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Mühlenpfordtstraße 23, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany ' Business Information Systems, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Mühlenpfordtstraße 23, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany

Abstract: Entrepreneurship requires creative approaches to tackle many challenges faced in establishing a new business. Recognising opportunities and developing ideas requires entrepreneurs to be creative in order to establish beneficial business models. Actively supporting the creative process can therefore result in enhanced ideas. Within this article, we discuss the relevance of creativity support and the use of information technology to support entrepreneurial creativity. As part of the applied design science research methodology, we developed a creativity support tool, which aims to support the divergent thinking process, which has been identified to be especially important for entrepreneurial ideation. We conducted an experiment to evaluate the efficiency of our artefact. The results indicate that the artefact, which automatically presents external word stimuli to the idea generator, is able to enhance creativity, expand the entrepreneur's solution space and supports the recognition of more idea aspects.

Keywords: creativity; entrepreneurship; creativity support; creativity support tools; CST; idea stimulation; creative stimulus; cognitive creativity; divergent thinking.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESB.2018.090345

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2018 Vol.33 No.4, pp.532 - 552

Received: 03 Jan 2017
Accepted: 30 Mar 2017

Published online: 13 Mar 2018 *

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