Myths About Creativity You Need to Stop Believing Now

There's a long-standing myth about intellectual property - the idea that a creative idea is proprietary to the person who thought of it.

But history and empirical research revealed that new ideas are actually combinations of older ideas and that sharing those helps generate more innovation.

Many companies rely on a technical expert or team of experts to generate a stream of creative ideas. Harder problems call for even more knowledgeable experts.

Instead, research suggests that particularly tough problems often require the perspective of an outsider or someone not limited by the knowledge of why something can’t be done.

This myth argues that that bigger incentives, monetary or otherwise, will increase motivation and hence increase innovation productivity.

Incentives can help, but often they do more harm than good, as people learn to game the system.

People often think that striking creative works are just done by a single person, ignoring supportive work and collaborative preliminary effort.

Creativity is often a team effort, and recent research into creative teams can help leaders build the perfect creative troupe.

Many people talk about brainstorming, as group discussions to explore every possible approach, no matter how far-out, to yield creative breakthroughs.

But there is actually no proof that just "throwing ideas around" consistently produces innovative breakthroughs.

Believers in this myth want everyone to get along and work happily together to foster innovations.

However, many of the most creative companies have found ways to structure dissent and conflict into their process to better push their employees' creative limits.

It states that constraints hinder a person from becoming fully innovative, compared to people that have "unlimited" resources.

Research shows, however, that creativity loves constraints. So maybe companies should try doing the opposite: intentionally apply limits to leverage the creative potential of their people.

It states that once we have a new idea, the work is done.

But the world won’t beat a path to our door or even find the door to an idea for a better mousetrap unless we communicate it, market it and find the right customers.