Conformists Boost Creativity

02/23/2012

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something, but to be someone.
Coco Chanel

"To drive creativity, add some conformity," urges Ella Miron-Spektor in her article by that name in Harvard Business Review (March 2012). Based on studies of 41 industrial "radical-innovation" teams, Miron-Spektor concluded that teams with a variety of cognitive types produce higher levels of innovation. She observes that 50% of all people have a mix of thought patterns, so every team will have a number of these "more-general thinkers". But the most innovate teams will have this balance of more specialized thinkers...

Creatives (should comprise 20 - 30% of the team) are "the source of radical-innovation ideas, but they're not always attentive to usefulness, may initiate conflict, and don't care much about rules."

Detail-Oriented People (up to 10%) may "strengthen functions such as budgetary control, but they're skittish about taking risks."

Conformists (10 - 20%) support the creatives, boosting cooperation and improving a team's confidence.

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