Think outside your box: Enhancing creativity through multicultural interactions

• Main Author: Knowledge@SMU
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2009
• Subjects: Business; Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operations; Technology and Innovation
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/ksmu/182; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1181&context=ksmu
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Creative ideas are often the result of two or more seemingly non-overlapping concepts. The more we expose ourselves to diverse experiences, the more likely we might be to sample from a richer pool of ideas, thereby facilitating our creativity, and by extension for some, organisational innovation. This is because experience lowers our resistance and increases our readiness to sample foreign concepts. Angela Leung, an assistant professor of psychology at Singapore Management University, notes that while ideas from differing cultural experiences can be recruited as intellectual resources, several factors inhibit our ability to draw on these experiences, thus impeding our creative potential.