Creativity Enhancement: Use of a Simple Creativity Tutorial in Information Systems Education

Since the dawn of humanity, creativity has been critical to surmounting the challenges of life. Innovation is particularly essential to survival on every level from an individual solving his/her problems to a world dependent on adaptive approaches to cope with rapidly expanding populations and enormous international tensions. Currently, information systems programs are not fostering the creativity needed to sustain the innovation required to compete in the 21st century marketplace. Educators and researchers need to better understand the effects of creativity training on creative performance to best design programs that meet the needs of information systems personnel and their employers. The results of this study provide evidence that it would be valuable for organizations to experiment with creativity tutorials and recommend that future research be conducted using larger samples of individuals with low levels of creativity. Because the costs of informing people about creativity are low and creativity tutorials can be designed to be easily administered and completed, the authors recommend that a low-cost tutorial would be a cost effective and beneficial strategy for organizations to employ with information systems personnel, especially those who assess themselves as low in creativity.