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Design Thinking Research pp 75–85Cite as

Creativity and Culture: State of the Art

Part of the Understanding Innovation book series (UNDINNO)

Abstract

Our project goal was to understand how creativity is defined across cultures, to identify key stimuli for fostering creativity in different cultures, and to understand how creative performance differs by culture. Based on a comprehensive literature review and several field studies of designers, we find that current research on creativity and culture is biased toward Western conceptions. Applying this Western-biased view of creativity, research concludes that the West shows greater creative performance than the East. The East, in contrast, emphasizes the value of re-interpreting existing practices and de-emphasizing originality. Most recent approaches to the study of creativity, however, measure the number of ideas and the level of originality as key indicators of creativity. We also found that scant research has been conducted to understand the factors that stimulate creativity in different cultures. Though factors such as extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation and conformity pressure have been explored, results are inconclusive. We speculate on new directions for research on creativity and culture.

Keywords

  • Intrinsic Motivation
  • Creative Performance
  • Extrinsic Motivation
  • Individualistic Culture
  • Korean Student

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Principal Investigator, Department of Management Science & Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305–4026, USA

    Hannah Hyunjee Kim, Siddharth Mishra, Pamela Hinds & Lei Liu

Authors
  1. Hannah Hyunjee Kim
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  2. Siddharth Mishra
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  3. Pamela Hinds
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  4. Lei Liu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pamela Hinds .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Hasso-Plattner-Institute for Software Sy, Prof-Dr-Helmert-Str. 2 -3, Potsdam, 14482, Germany

    Hasso Plattner

  2. Softwaresystemtechnik GmbH, Hasso-Plattner-Institut für, Prof.-Dr.-Helmert-Str. 2-3, Potsdam, 14482, Germany

    Christoph Meinel

  3. , Stanford Center for Design Research, Stanford University, Panama Mall 424, Stanford, 94305-2232, California, USA

    Larry Leifer

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Kim, H.H., Mishra, S., Hinds, P., Liu, L. (2012). Creativity and Culture: State of the Art. In: Plattner, H., Meinel, C., Leifer, L. (eds) Design Thinking Research. Understanding Innovation. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21643-5_5

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