Bill Breen's article, "The 6 Myths of Creativity" (Fast Company, December 2004) discusses the findings of a study by Harvard Business School's Professor Teresa Amabile taglined "A new study will change how you generate ideas and decide who's really creative in your company."
Amabile, who heads the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School and is the only tenured professor at a top B-school to devote her entire research program to the study of creativity, is one of the country's foremost explorers of business innovation.
What are the six myths? You can read them in their entirety in the article, but a quick rundown is:
- Creativity Comes From Creative Types
- Money Is a Creativity Motivator
- Time Pressure Fuels Creativity
- Fear Forces Breakthroughs
- Competition Beats Collaboration
- A Streamlined Organization Is a Creative Organization
