Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal

Strat. Entrepreneurship J., 2: 15 (2008) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/sej.38

MODERATOR COMMENTS NEW LOOK AT CREATIVITY IN THE ENTREPRENEURIAL PROCESS

JING ZHOU*
Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, Rice University, Houston, Texas, U.S.A.

In this article I provide brief review and comments on three articles presented at the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journals Launch Conference and published in this issue of the Journal. Arguing that creativity plays an important role in the entire entrepreneurial process and that contemporary research on creativity has much to offer in advancing our understanding of entrepreneurship, I suggest four new research directions that would expand the scope of entrepreneurship research. Copyright 2008 Strategic Management Society.

INTRODUCTION
One of Strategic Entrepreneurship Journals (SEJ) 10 theme areas is Creativity, Imagination, and Opportunities. More specically, SEJ states, Opportunities arise from Imagination and Insight and lead to creative, valuable Inventions and Innovations. What creates opportunities? Do these four Is imply a process involving creativity? While we know much about individual creativity, how does it contribute to the innovation process? To what extent is creativity an inherited characteristic, and what can we learn from the behavioral sciences about it? Is imagination a group process? What is organizational creativity? How are opportunities identied? What is required to exploit opportunities? (Strategic Management Society). The three articles presented at the Creativity, Imagination, and Opportunities session at the SEJ

Keywords: creativity; entrepreneurship; innovation; interactional approach; exploitation and exploration *Correspondence to: Jing Zhou, Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, Rice University, 6100 Main St., Houston, TX 77005. E-mail: jzhou@rice.edu

Launch Conference in Oak Brook, Illinois, nicely reected the above description of the theme. In the rst article, Nicolaou et al. empirically explore the relationship between genetic factors and self-reported entrepreneurial activities. On the basis of results obtained by using quantitative genetics techniques to analyze data collected from a sample of monozygotic and dizygotic twins, they conclude that there is 37 to 42 percent heritability of entrepreneurship. In addition, they show that this relationship is partially mediated by sensation seeking, a personality trait focusing on individuals need for novel experiences. This article takes research that focuses on the characteristics of entrepreneurs (e.g., do specic personality traits determine and predict who would become entrepreneurs?) a step further by examining a possible genetic basis of entrepreneurial activities. Moreover, it reveals that sensation seeking is one mechanism by which genetic factors are related to entrepreneurial activities. Typical items measuring sensation seeking include I often get so carried away by new and exciting things and ideas that I never think of possible complicationsand I am an impulsive person. The nding that genetic factors are linked to entrepreneurial activities via sensation

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J. Zhou
Adner and Levinthals new conceptualization suggests that it is possible to resolve this tension. They argue that exploratory activities, in fact, can be seen as exploitive behaviors, albeit along the dimensions that are not acknowledged as the organizations current performance dimensions. They offer suggestions on how organizations members and entrepreneurs may map their new exploratory activities onto accepted or legitimate internal or external performance dimensions. Adner and Levinthal suggest the need for entrepreneurs and organizations members who are interested in entrepreneurial activities within the organization to use their creativity and imagination not only in the process of developing new products and services, but also in the process of selling their ideas and initiatives to others in order to gain legitimacy, funding, and other support essential for the new ventures success. If one were to pick up one key word to represent this theme area, it would be creativity. Imagination is part of the creative idea production process, and creativity may be essential for opportunity recognition and creation. In the Nicolaou et al. article, creativity is reected in the action of starting a new business or using new business ideas to create new businesses. In the Shalley and Perry-Smith article, creativity is explicitly treated as the dependent variable at the team level of analysis. And in the Adner and Levinthal article, creativity is represented by entrepreneurs and organizations members strategies and actions in projecting their exploration of new opportunities onto accepted performance dimensions and metrics. Indeed, all three articles are consistent with the idea that creativity is an indispensable component in the entire entrepreneurship process, from producing ideas concerning new products and services in established rms or ideas for launching a new venture, to eliciting support, securing funding, gaining legitimacy, and commercializing and growing the new business or new venture. As such, more explicit and focused research attention on creativity at the individual, group, and organization levels in the entrepreneurial process is critical for understanding and promoting entrepreneurship within established rms or new ventures. In this regard, the organizational creativity literature sheds light on what topics researchers interested in creativity in the entrepreneurship context could pursue, and what theoretical perspectives might be useful in guiding this stream of research.
Strat. Entrepreneurship J., 2: 15 (2008) DOI: 10.1002/sej

seeking (such as being impulsive) raises intriguing questions concerning whether there is any genetic basis for purposeful, strategic choices and actions taken by individuals to engage in entrepreneurship. Stemming from the premise that creativity is a social process, in the second article, Shalley and Perry-Smith theorize how team members social relationships inside and outside a team affect the teams creative cognition (e.g., cognitive exibility, divergent thinking, and remote association) and creativity at the team level of analysis. They argue that individual team members diverse ties with those outside of the team will facilitate these team members creative cognition, which can be transferred and infused within the team. Such transfer and infusion of creative cognition is especially likely if individual team members in whom the original creative cognition resides are centrally located in the teams socio-cognitive network. And teams that have developed higher levels of team-level creative cognition in this way are likely to exhibit greater team creativity. Although they focus on creativity in generalnot specically restricted to the context of entrepreneurshipthe theoretical framework and propositions developed by Shalley and Perry-Smith are quite applicable to entrepreneurs and the social process of entrepreneurship. One robust nding in the entrepreneurship literature is that entrepreneurs social networks matter to their success in launching new ventures and obtaining funding. And yet the mechanisms through which network positions contribute to entrepreneurs creativity, imagination, and opportunity recognition and creation are not always clear. Obviously, this is an area in which more research could lead to important discoveries and prescriptions for entrepreneurship training and development. The cognitive perspective developed by Shalley and Perry-Smithespecially the concept of creative cognition and how it is transferred and infused from individual team members to the team as a wholeoffers a promising direction along which such research could be conducted. In the third article, Adner and Levinthal offer a new and alternative lens to facilitate an in-depth understanding of the tension between exploration and exploitation. Although the distinction of and tension between exploring radically new opportunities and exploiting existing pathways have been portrayed as quite stark and fundamentalrequiring organizations to make hard decisions concerning trade-offs in resource allocation and management attention
Copyright 2008 Strategic Management Society

Commentory
CREATIVITY IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP: NEW RESEARCH DIRECTIONS
According to the creativity literature, creativity refers to the production of novel and useful ideas concerning products, services, work methods, processes, and procedures by an individual or a small group of individuals working together (Amabile, 1988). Both novelty and usefulness are necessary conditions for an idea to be considered creative in the business context. An idea that is novel but has no potential value or practicality would not be considered creative in business. Creativity is conceptually different from, but related to, innovation because creativity focuses idea production, whereas innovation emphasizes implementation of creative ideas. Creativity often serves as a starting point for innovation (Amabile, 1988; Oldham and Cummings, 1996). The creativity literature suggests many promising directions for future research in this theme area (see Mumford, 2003; Shalley, Zhou, and Oldham, 2004; Zhou and Shalley, 2003; Zhou and Shalley, 2007 for reviews of the creativity literature and discussions on future research directions). While researchers can still add signicant value to the literature by continuing to conduct research in several existing arenassuch as traits or characteristics of entrepreneurs (but see Rauch and Frese, 2007) and the cognitive process (see Baron, 2004) concerning creativity, imagination, and opportunities in entrepreneurshipin the paragraphs to follow, Ill highlight four additional future research directions. Is entrepreneurship a single- or multi-dimensional construct? The conceptual distinction between creativity and innovation suggests that to advance our understanding of entrepreneurship, researchers rst need to be precise about what the dependent variable is. As Nicolaou et al. point out, the extant literature does not have a unied denition of entrepreneurship. If entrepreneurship is a process of creating something new, then it would be necessary to identify the key components and stages of the entrepreneurship process and investigate whether creativity is equally important and desirable across all these components and stages, and whether the same set of factors exert similar inuences on creativity for different components and at different stages of entrepreneurship. For example, is creativity equally important in opportunity creation and opportunity recognition?
Copyright 2008 Strategic Management Society

Can individual entrepreneurs lead and elicit collective imagination for the benets of producing more creative (more novel and more useful or protable) ideas and better implementation of those ideas than individual entrepreneurs acting alone? Interactional approach to entrepreneurship research Similar to psychological studies of entrepreneurship, early creativity research took a person-centered approach, focusing on identifying personalities that characterize creative individuals (Barron and Harrington, 1981). However, despite the enormous effort spent on identifying key personalities that determine creativity across subject areas, empirical results have been inconclusive and inconsistent (Barron and Harrington, 1981). Thus, contemporary research has emphasized the need to identify and examine contextual factors that facilitate or inhibit creativity (Zhou and Shalley, 2003). More recently, researchers have come to realize that a fuller and more comprehensive understanding of how creativity is enhanced or restricted would require an interactional approach in which both personal and contextual factors are taken into consideration (Shalley et al., 2004; Woodman, Sawyer, and Grifn, 1993). This interactional approach may be equally suitable in advancing our understanding of entrepreneurship. For example, it is possible that entrepreneurs with certain characteristics are more likely to create entrepreneurial opportunities in certain conditions. Interestingly, the creativity literature has shown that when creative role models (e.g., coworkers) were present, employees with less creative personalities were more likely to exert creativity when their supervisors did not engage in close monitoring (Zhou, 2003). It would also be interesting to investigate whether some contextual conditions propel individuals with less entrepreneurial inclinations to engage in entrepreneurial activities. Research following this interactional approach rst needs to articulate a theoretical rationale for the personcontext interactionand then it needs to identify a full range of personal and contextual factors that inuence creativity, imagination, and opportunity recognition in the entrepreneurship context. Consequences of creativity and imagination Although it is often assumed that creativity is a critical element in the entrepreneurial process, more
Strat. Entrepreneurship J., 2: 15 (2008) DOI: 10.1002/sej

J. Zhou
and found that under certain conditions, negative moods might foster creativity and positive moods might inhibit it. In their most recent study, George and Zhou (2007) theorized and tested a dual-tuning perspective concerning interactive effects of positive mood, negative mood, and supportive contexts on creativity. Results showed that positive mood, negative mood, and a supportive context interacted to affect creativity in such a way that when positive mood and a supportive context were both high, negative mood has the strongest positive relation with creativity.

direct examination of the positive consequences of creativity needs to be undertaken in the entrepreneurship setting. In addition, it would be interesting to explore whether creativity has any negative consequences in the entrepreneurial process. For example, is imagination always desirable in the entire entrepreneurial process? Can an extremely strong drive to achieve high levels of creativity become an impediment in the pursuit of protability and new venture success? Dissatisfaction and positive and negative affect Although none of the three articles presented at this session at the Oak Brook Conference explicitly addresses the role that dissatisfaction and affect play in generating creative ideas, using imagination, and recognizing and creating opportunities, there is a vibrant stream of research in the creativity literature that demonstrates relationships among dissatisfaction, positive and negative affect, and creativity. Traditionally, positive affect was shown to facilitate divergent thinking and word association tasks in the behavioral laboratory (e.g., Isen et al., 1985; Isen, Daubman, and Nowicki, 1987). In a more recent eld study, Amabile, Barsade, Mueller, and Staw (2005) showed that positive affect (e.g., self-reported satisfaction with the team) was an antecedent of creativity. On the other hand, other researchers have uncovered that dissatisfaction and negative affect could be functional for individuals to engage in creative activities. For example, negative affect was shown to have a functional impact on creativity (e.g., Kaufmann and Vosburg, 1997). In a series of studies conducted in the workplace, George and Zhou (George & Zhou, 2002, 2007; Zhou & George, 2001) systematically investigated conditions under which job dissatisfaction or negative affect may be benecial for creativity. In the rst of this series of studies, Zhou and George (2001) formulated a voice perspective of creativity that theorized conditions under which job dissatisfaction led to creativity. According to this perspective, under certain circumstances (e.g., continuance commitment and coworker useful feedback), dissatised employees may engage in creative activities as an expression of voice. Results supported their theoretical predictions. In the second study, George and Zhou (2002), on the basis of the mood-as-input model in the affect literature (e.g., Martin and Stoner, 1996), hypothesized
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CONCLUSION
The entrepreneurial process is affect laden. Entrepreneurs may experience excitement and pleasure when they discover new opportunities, and they may experience frustration and dismay when their funding requests are rejected. While dissatisfaction with the status quo may propel some individuals to start a new venture, it may discourage others from even attempting to take initiatives. No doubt, how dissatisfaction and positive and negative affect independently and jointly inuence creative idea production, imagination, recognition, and creation of opportunities in the entrepreneurship setting is an exciting area for future research.

REFERENCES
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Strat. Entrepreneurship J., 2: 15 (2008) DOI: 10.1002/sej

Commentory
George JM, Zhou J. 2007. Dual tuning in a supportive context: joint contributions of positive mood, negative mood, and supervisory behaviors to employee creativity. Academy of Management Journal 50: 605 622. Isen AM, Daubman KA, Nowicki GP. 1987. Positive affect facilitates creative problem solving. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52: 1122 1131. Isen AM, Johnson MMS, Mertz E, Robinson GR. 1985. The inuence of positive affect on the unusualness of word associations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48: 14131426. Kaufmann G, Vosburg SK. 1997. Paradoxical mood effects on creative problem-solving. Cognition and Emotion 11: 151170. Martin LL, Stoner P. 1996. Mood as input: what we think about how we feel determines how we think. In Striving and Feeling: Interactions Among Goals, Affect, and Self-Regulation, Martin LL, Tesser A (eds). Lawrence Erlbaum: Mahwah, NJ; 279301. Mumford MD. 2003. Where have we been, where are we going? Taking stock in creativity research. Creativity Research Journal 15: 107120. Nicolaou N, Shane S, Cherkas L, Spector TD. 2008. The inuence of sensation seeking in the heritability of entrepreneurship. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal 2(1): 721. Oldham GR, Cummings A. 1996. Employee creativity: personal and contextual factors at work. Academy of Management Journal 39: 607634. Rauch A, Frese M. 2007. Born to be an entrepreneur? Revisiting the personality approach to entrepreneurship.

In The Psychology of Entrepreneurship, Baum JR, Frese M, Baron RA (eds). Lawrence Erlbaum: Mahwah, NJ; 4165. Shalley CE, Perry-Smith JE. 2008. The emergence of team creative cognition: the role of diverse outside ties, socio-cognitive network centrality, and team evolution. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal 2(1): 2341. Shalley CE, Zhou J, Oldham GR. 2004. The effects of personal and contextual characteristics on creativity: where should we go from here? Journal of Management 30: 933958. Strategic Management Society. 2008. SEJ 10 Theme Areas. Available at: http://sej.strategicmanagement.net/themes. php (accessed January 2008). Woodman RW, Sawyer JE, Grifn RW. 1993. Toward a theory of organizational creativity. Academy of Management Review 18: 293321. Zhou J. 2003. When the presence of creative coworkers is related to creativity: Role of supervisor close monitoring, developmental feedback, and creative personality. Journal of Applied Psychology 88: 413422. Zhou J, George JM. 2001. When job dissatisfaction leads to creativity: Encouraging the expression of voice. Academy of Management Journal 44: 682696. Zhou J, Shalley CE. 2003. Research on employee creativity: a critical review and directions for future research. In Research in Personnel and Human Resource Management, Martocchio JJ, Ferris GR (eds). Elsevier Science: Oxford, U.K.; 165217. Zhou J, Shalley CE. 2007. Expanding the scope and impact of organizational creativity research. In Handbook of Organizational Creativity, Zhou J, Shalley CE (eds). Lawrence Erlbaum: Hillsdale, NJ.

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Strat. Entrepreneurship J., 2: 15 (2008) DOI: 10.1002/sej