The Truth about Creativity – with Theresa Amabile

I recently watched a very interesting interview taken by David Burkus some years ago. He invited Theresa Amabile to present her approach and perspective on Creativity. She is a truly inspiring being and professional!

Who is Theresa Amabile?

• primarily known for her research and writing on creativity, dating to the late 1970s
• she studies how everyday life inside organizations can influence people and their performance
• her research encompasses creativity, productivity, innovation, and inner work life – the confluence of emotions, perceptions, and motivation that people experience as they react to events at work
• has published over 100 scholarly articles and chapters in outlets including top journals in psychology
• has taught MBA and executive courses on managing for creativity, leadership, and ethics at Harvard Business School, Amabile

Valuable take-aways from the Interview

• We were given a small print of the great masterworks of painting and we were told to copy it. It was that experience that made me lose my interest in doing anything with art
• What was lacking in my engagement with art during those years with elementary schools was intrinsic motivation
• People will be most creative when they are motivated primarily by interest, enjoyment, satisfaction, and personal challenge of the work itself and not by external motivators like rewards, deadlines, competitions
• Creativity it’s producing anything that is new and useful or new and appropriate in any realm of human activity
• Creativity It’s not limited to the arts. It’s not limited to Science.
• People can be creative in any realm of human activity.
• People can’t do their most creative work unless they don’t feel some level of engagement with their activity for it’s own sake.
• We all come with talents in different areas and that’s kind of starting point for our expertise but it really has to be developed through many hours of engaging with the activity
• Creative thinking skills include willingness to suspend judgment of things until you have changed to explore them a little but more
• We found in our experiments that people become less creative if they are focused on how others are going to be evaluated while they are working
• If you focus on the external evaluation you will become less intrinsically motivated and that will undermine your creativity
• When people are feeling most strongly intrinsically motivated when they have the most positive emotions, like happiness, pride, warmth. when they have the most positive perceptions of their colleagues, boss, or organization that’s when they most likely to come up with creative ideas or solve a problem creatively.