Eintrag in der Universitätsbibliographie der TU Chemnitz
Tarekegne, Jonas Worede
Arnold, Marlen (Prof. Dr.) ; Ivanaj, Vera (Prof. Dr.) ; Grasser, Benoît (Prof. Dr.) ; Boutinot, Amélie (Prof. Dr.) ; Sträter, Oliver (Prof. Dr.) (Gutachter)
The role of playfulness during the idea generation process in the early stage of innovation in organizations
Die Rolle von Playfulness im Ideengenerierungsprozess während der frühen Phase von Innovationen in Organisationen
Kurzfassung in englisch
Play is training for the unexpected”. This statement by Mark Beckoff sums up not only the potential of play for humanity, but also its high value for every aspect of life. From an anthropological explanatory model based on the principles of Johan Huizinga's 'Homo Ludens', play was and is not only a necessity for the development of our modern civilization, but also an innate, primal human trait. With this in mind and knowing that play can provide an appropriate skill set to face the unexpected, a return to our playful abilities could be helpful in meeting the challenges of our dynamic and volatile times. Play allows us to immerse ourselves in the unknown while at the same time getting closer to the essential core of what it means to be human. When this state of total immersion and flow is achieved, the mindset for creating and crafting new ways, solutions or ideas for challenges of any kind becomes more tangible. To deal with challenges and complexities, organizations and companies have relied on the skills of their members or employees to foster innovation. For this reason, organizations and companies have postulated groups and teams to facilitate and manage innovation processes. An integral part of the process of fostering innovation in organizations or companies is always the generation of ideas through creativity workshops. In creativity workshops, a heterogeneous group of people is brought together under the guidance of a facilitator. The facilitator's task is to use different types of creativity methods that best suit the goals of the workshop. As a facilitator, it is crucial to find the right balance between stimulating creativity through guided creativity methods on the one hand and maintaining an environment of independent free thinking and creative spontaneity without guidelines on the other. Today, as the paradigm shift of the free market towards an ecological and sustainable economy increases the demand to accelerate the output of new technologies and innovative solutions, organizations need to find new effective ways to enrich their idea generation processes. Although various methods with playful attributes such as serious games or gamification frameworks are common, the coherent use of play, playfulness or creativity methods with playful elements in the context of idea generation in organizations still needs to be improved or fully developed. This cumulative dissertation examines the role of playfulness in idea generation in the early stages of innovation. By opening up the understanding of the concept of play in the first paper, a general theoretical basis and definition of what play can offer as a means of creative idea generation is manifested for the dissertation. Huizinga's model of Homo Ludens suggests that every act of play is meaningful. It is in this spirit of meaningful endeavor that engagement and motivation with the subject under discussion will arise according to the principles of Homo Ludens. As a result of my comparative literature research in the first paper, I suggested that the use of actual playful elements would be beneficial to the generation of new ideas. In order to test whether or not the use of playful elements in idea generation is indeed helpful, the second paper was designed to compare, in a quasi-experimental setting, three creativity methods with playful interventions in terms of their impact on creative output and the workshop experience for participants. In particular, the research looked at the playful interventions of drama intervention, toolkit-based modelling, and gaming. We used the methods independently in several real-world creativity workshops. To create types of outcomes, we assessed the quantity and quality of ideas developed with each method, and also the workshop experience of participants in an exploratory study. It turned out that there was no significant difference between the methods, but compared to traditional workshops, playful interventions outperformed traditional workshops in terms of quantity and quality of creative output. In addition, the workshop experience was a source of inspiration for participants in their day-to-day collaboration. Data collection for the second and third papers in this thesis was conducted with and in a case organization in the automotive sector in Germany. After investigating the influence of playfulness or playful elements in the sense of Homo Ludens, we shifted the focus from the influence of playful creativity methods to the influence of personality traits with the practitioners of such playful creativity methods, the facilitators. In the third and final paper we asked what influence the personality of the facilitator has on creativity workshops. We identified distinctive facilitator personalities for the quasi-experimental case study. The quasi-experimental case study was therefore designed to identify distinctive facilitator personality traits. We selected three facilitators who were asked to facilitate identically designed workshops, and we created personality profiles using the NEO-FFI Big Five personality model. The quantity and quality of ideas generated, the participants' experience of the workshop and the conduct of participatory observations were assessed as creative outcomes. The study found that a facilitator who is extroverted, empathetic, has deep methodological knowledge and extensive experience in facilitating creativity workshops is particularly advantageous. Finally, the findings suggest that the facilitator's personality may influence the outcomes of creativity workshops in terms of creative output and workshop experience. With regard to all three papers, this dissertation achieves a number of results and contributes to a broader understanding of how creative ideas can be achieved through playfulness in organizations. Based on the contributions of the first paper, the concept of play was introduced and re-conceptualized for the context of idea generation. The next paper highlighted three different types of playful interventions that can be used as a scientifically validated guide for organizations. The final paper explored the role of the facilitator persona in the implementation of playful creativity methods. The results can be considered valuable as they assessed personality traits that are beneficial for effective facilitation of playful interventions in creativity workshops. The coherence of all the research efforts during this dissertation provides a general and specific understanding of the question of the role of playfulness in the idea generation process from a methodological and practical perspective.
| Universität: | Technische Universität Chemnitz | |
| Institut: | Professur BWL - Innovationsforschung und Technologiemanagement | |
| Fakultät: | Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaften | |
| Dokumentart: | Dissertation | |
| Betreuer: | Schulz, Klaus-Peter (Prof. Dr.) ; Hüsig, Stefan (Prof. Dr.) | |
| DOI: | doi:10.60687/2025-0114 | |
| Quelle: | 2025. - 105 S. | |
| SWD-Schlagwörter: | Innovation , Kreativität , Organisation , Spiel | |
| Freie Schlagwörter (Englisch): | innovation , playfulness , creativitiy , workshop , organizations | |
| DDC-Sachgruppe: | 658.314 ; 153.35 | |
| Sprache: | englisch | |
| Tag der mündlichen Prüfung | 25.10.2024 |
