Exploring the Role of Creators’ Responses within the Creative Idea Evaluation Process

In recent years, creativity and innovation scholars have focused their attention towards the complexities in the evaluation of creative ideas (Mueller & Yin, 2021; Zhou, Wang, Bavato, Tasselli, & Wu, 2019). Specifically, the main question has been on how evaluators may overcome the bias against novelty (Harvey & Mueller, 2021; Mueller, Melwani & Goncalo, 2012). Despite establishing the importance of shaping the evaluator’s cognition to increase the implementation of ideas, this perspective neglects to account for the social dynamics underlying the idea evaluation process, where creators may also be involved in assessing the value of their own ideas and actively determine if an idea’s journey should continue (Berg, 2016; Perry- Smith & Mannucci, 2017). While insights in creative feedback literature suggests the value of feedback to creators (Abi-Esber, Abel, Schroeder, & Gino, 2022; Harrison & Rouse, 2015; Toivonen, Idoko, Jha, & Harvey, 2022), the focus remains very much towards the outcome of developing and implementing creative ideas successfully, rather than how creators navigate and react towards receiving evaluations. In this symposium, we seek to provide a more comprehensive view of the underlying social dynamics of the idea evaluation process by asking: How do creators respond and behave when creative ideas are being evaluated? Second, to what extent should the anticipated responses of creators or other audiences be considered by evaluators during the evaluation process? Across three presentations, we discuss these key questions. Understanding How People React to Change Author: Yidan Yin; U. of Southern California -Marshall School of Business Author: Jennifer Mueller; U. of San Diego Author: Cheryl Wakslak; U. of Southern California Creative Resonance: How Evaluators Connect to Creators in the Course of Developing Novel Ideas Author: Onyaglanu Idoko; U. College London Author: Sarah Harvey; UCL School of Management Author: Tuukka Toivonen; UCL - Dept of Science and tech (UK); GLOCOM International U. of Japan The Influence of Leader Silence on Late-Stage Creative Idea Abandonment Author: Velvetina Siu Ching Lim; UCL School of Management