Cultivating a Paradox Mindset — the Key to Greater Creativity

Faculty research in 2020/2021 offers a case study of how bold ideas can revitalise business thinking and practices to address contemporary challenges.

Embracing “Both/And” Decision-making

Research recently published by Ella Miron-Spektor, Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour, INSEAD, and her co-authors reveals that leaders grappling with organisation design and management during the Covid pandemic have faced paradoxical choices that defy traditional “either/or” decision-making. Coping effectively with Covid-era problems, Miron-Spektor found that a “paradox mindset” — defined as the tendency to value, accept and feel comfortable with tensions — can foster creative thinking. Evidence suggests that leaders are more successful when they are able to embrace the paradox inherent in seemingly contradictory choices — for example, blending realism with a caring attitude, valuing both individual agency and collaboration, implementing short-term interventions as well as long-term recovery plans.

One model of “both/and” innovation to emerge from the pandemic is dual-mode teaching, prompted by the need to reopen universities while many students continue to study from home. By combining elements of classroom teaching with distance learning, INSEAD has developed a novel virtual platform for student learning that promotes inclusion and will persist beyond the pandemic as a new category in the school’s offerings.

Sparking and Sustaining Creativity

In another study, Miron-Spektor and her team tracked the performance of manufacturing workers over seven years. They found that, with the right mindset, creativity can be developed and sustained over time. Employees with a “learning orientation” (believing they can build skills and abilities through effort) improved their creativity faster and continued to generate high-quality ideas even when it became harder to depart from tried-and-tested solutions. In contrast, workers with a “performance orientation” (seeking to demonstrate their creativity to others) were productive at the beginning of the process, but once they ran out of ideas, stopped engaging at a faster rate than those with a learning mindset.

Findings like these have powerful implications for the future of businesses that require creativity to thrive. They reveal that identified “creators” — people like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs — are not the sole source of innovation in an enterprise. In fact, when people are given an outlet to contribute creatively, innovative ideas can spring from the shop floor.