The Role of Creativity (and Creative behaviour) in Identifying Entrepreneurs

Abstract

As the importance of creativity and in turn innovation for individuals, organizations, nations and the global community as a whole becomes recognized, so too does the value of identifying those individuals with the potential to become entrepreneurs. The nature of creative knowledge is such that it draws typically upon both codified and tacit forms of knowledge, to which end an instrument is presented based on workplace scenarios combined with a number of psychometric tests. With opportunities for innovation afforded by the internet, the identification and development of a new breed of individuals known as e-entrepreneurs seems particularly worthwhile. Thus in this study we have focused on scenarios within the field of information and communication technology. Results indicate innovators may present multiple personality styles which offer strengths to entrepreneurial activities. Finally through identification of creative personnel our approach offers a way for organizations to cultivate promising entrepreneurs. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61520-597-4.ch009 International Journal of E-Entrepreneurship and Innovation, 1(4), 36-54, October-December 2010 37 Copyright © 2010, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. survival has been generally recognized (Porter, 1985). In highly competitive and uncertain environments, it logically follows that the success of an ICT venture by an e-Entrepreneur will largely depend on the innovation associated with the venture and ability of the entrepreneur to creatively respond to opportunities and threats. Many courses, often at the postgraduate level, have emerged over the last decade seeking to develop entrepreneurs and equip students to understand and manage innovation. Interestingly, the study by Zampetakis and Moustakis (2006) found that the study of business courses at university including those intended to promote innovative and entrepreneurial behaviour tended to dampen motivation to pursue this path. Instead, desire to become an entrepreneur was related to a student’s self-perception of creativity, in turn largely the product of being exposed to a culture of self-employment within their home environment. Entrepreneurs by definition need to be highly motivated and selfdriven individuals. Thus motivation, desire and determination play important roles in achieving success. Innovation is often driven and enabled by technology. ICT ventures provide strong extrinsic motivators to entrepreneurs who are intrinsically motivated to identify and exploit business opportunities. Given the difficulty of producing entrepreneurs via education and training, this paper is particularly interested in offering a method by which potential e-entrepreneurs can be identified as measured by their creativity and responses to innovation relevant scenarios. As an extension the method can also be used to identify compatible business partners in a joint venture and to identify areas of difference or weakness. In the next section, we review the current psychology-based literature on creativity and present a framework for investigating creative and innovative individuals. We present our methodology followed by data analysis and discussions. The paper concludes with future work and final remarks. bACKGROUND The work reported in this paper follows on from our work on ICT innovation and entrepreneurship (Richard, & Busch, 2008). We argue ICT innovation is really just a subset of innovation. We focus here on what it means to be a creative or innovative individual, for creative individuals will tend to be creative regardless of the discipline, just as exemplary tacit knowledge users will be regardless of their domain (Sternberg et al., 1995); and this ‘finding’ in turn explains why psychometric instruments exist testing for creativity, the ability to innovate and in the case of Sternberg et al. (1995), the ability to maximize use of tacit knowledge. In short, the outcome of the work reported here is a means by which organizations including e-businesses, may either establish the likelihood of innovative ability and entrepreneurialism in individuals, or alternatively provide an opportunity for individuals themselves to determine if they have an ‘inventive streak’ or possess more general entrepreneurial qualities. The authors are in the ICT domain and their testing to date has largely been with ICT aligned personnel. Of course as Sternberg et al. (1995) implies, much of the testing for knowledge we discuss in this chapter does not have to be domain-specific; the same means of assessment could apply to personnel in other disciplines. It is generally accepted that creativity involves both convergent and divergent styles of thinking (Eysenck, 1993; Runco, 2004). Here creative thinking resembles dream mentation (e.g., the processes of condensation and displacement), waking fantasy, and even ‘play’, all of which are connected with primary process thinking (Arieti, 1978; Martindale, & Dailey, 1996; Russ, 1998; Domino, Short, Evans, & Romano, 2002; Boag, 2006a, 2006b). This fluid type of thinking must be inhibited in order to be reality-focused, a view supported by studies examining attentional control mechanisms and psychotic processes (Stavridou, & Furnham, 1996; Langdon, & Coltheart, 2000; Karay17 more pages are available in the full version of this document, which may be purchased using the "Add to Cart" button on the publisher's webpage: www.igi-global.com/article/role-creativity-creative-behaviour-