Creativity as a way to innovate successfully

Abstract

Selecting innovative design concepts for further development entails decision making under conditions of sometimes extreme uncertainty pertaining to technical feasibility and market potential. In such situations, decision makers all too often become risk averse and reliant on known metrics that are inherently based on deductive and inductive logics. In prior research, however, good decision making on innovation has been linked with the complementary use of another form of logic: Abductive reasoning. Abductive reasoning changes the mind-set of decision makers to become intrinsically forward thinking and explorative towards innovation opportunity. In this paper, we present an experimental study suggesting that the cognitive, creative capabilities of humans correlate positively with their use of abductive reasoning in decision making. We are further able to show that a higher level of abductive reasoning leads to significantly better, i.e. more accurate, decisions in selecting successful innovation concepts. These findings have strong implications for companies seeking to improve their innovative performance, specifically, how and by whom decisions on innovation should be made.