Chaoying Tang

Accessed external knowledge, centrality of intra‐team knowledge networks, and R&D employee creativity

Accessing knowledge is an important component of managing research and development (R&D) employee creativity. Although previous literature on creativity highlights the value of external diversified knowledge and the centrality of intra-team knowledge network to creativity, the effects of accessed external knowledge characteristics on the network position of intra-team knowledge and creativity, as well as the moderating role of accessed knowledge content reliability, have hardly been considered. This empirical study helps shed some light on this issue in the context of R&D. In particular, the mediated moderation effect of the diversity and reliability of accessed knowledge on the centrality of intra-team knowledge network and employee creativity was analyzed. The data were gathered via questionnaires completed by R&D employees and leaders in biopharmaceutical companies in China. The results indicated that the reliability of accessed knowledge moderated the relation between the diversity of the accessed knowledge and centrality of intra-team knowledge network. The centrality, in turn, improved employee creativity. Theoretical and practical suggestions for R&D management are discussed.

Brain structure links everyday creativity to creative achievement.

Although creativity is commonly considered to be a cornerstone of human progress and vital to all realms of our lives, its neural basis remains elusive, partly due to the different tasks and measurement methods applied in research. In particular, the neural correlates of everyday creativity that can be experienced by everyone, to some extent, are still unexplored. The present study was designed to investigate the brain structure underlying individual differences in everyday creativity, as measured by the Creative Behavioral Inventory (CBI) (N=163). The results revealed that more creative activities were significantly and positively associated with larger gray matter volume (GMV) in the regional premotor cortex (PMC), which is a motor planning area involved in the creation and selection of novel actions and inhibition. In addition, the gray volume of the PMC had a significant positive relationship with creative achievement and Art scores, which supports the notion that training and practice may induce changes in brain structures. These results indicate that everyday creativity is linked to the PMC and that PMC volume can predict creative achievement, supporting the view that motor planning may play a crucial role in creative behavior.

An empirical study on firm R&D team's creativity: implications from China's hi‐tech industries

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the influence approach between team leadership and research and develop (R&D) team creativity in one joint‐venture firm of Chinese hi‐tech industries.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 14 R&D teams in one leading electronic joint‐venture firm in China based on questionnaires. Data were analyzed using hierarchical regression analysis to test the mediate effect of knowledge sharing on the relationship between leaders empowerment behavior and team creativity.Findings – The results reveal that, after the effects of leaders empowerment behavior had been controlled, tacit knowledge sharing contributed significantly to the explained variance of team creativity, while the explicate knowledge sharing was not significantly affect the creativity. Thus, tacit knowledge sharing partially mediated the relationship between leaders empowerment behavior and team creativity. The limitations of this study include it just selects the self‐report questio...

Creativity Perspective on Entrepreneurship

Tang, Byrge, and Zhou discuss the role of creativity training for entrepreneurship education and matters of concern in integrating creativity training in entrepreneurship education. The authors view creativity as a key competency of entrepreneurship being closely related to the abilities to recognize commercial opportunities, generate new business models, and build the skills to act upon them. They suggest exploring the relation between creativity and entrepreneurship from the perspectives of goal and process, characteristics, competency, and entrepreneurial intention. To successfully integrate creativity into entrepreneurship education, program designers should pay attention to a number of issues and concerns, such as the advancement of domain-relevant skills, creativity-relevant skills, task motivation, domain-specific or domain-general creativity training, and teaching and evaluation methods.

Growth Needs, Compensation Design, Intrinsic Motivation and R&D Creativity

Intrinsic motivation is a well accepted antecedent of creativity. Based on experiment studies’ results about the relationship between award and intrinsic motivation, this study aims to empirically analysis growth needs, payment design and intrinsic motivation. The data analysis result of R&D team members turns out that there is no significant correlation between payment design and intrinsic motivation. However, team member’s intrinsic motivation mediates the relationship of growth needs and creativity. The result temporarily implies that to enhance R&D team members’ intrinsic motivation, team members’ growth needs might be more important rather than payment.