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So who doesn’t want to have creative ideas in their business.
The problem is getting employees to be creative while doing their day job as well. We also know that just asking or demanding creativity can diminish creativity and innovation!
A simple approach many businesses take is to financially reward creative ideas given to the organisation — seems like a good idea to our capital driven leaders but recent research shows why this is not the best way to reward creativity!
In fact changing rewards increases the number and quality of creative suggestions.
What is the best way to reward creativity?
In this field study researchers found that offering a choice of rewards increased the number and quality of creative proposals for the business. Rewards were given if the ideas submitted were ranked in the top 20% of ideas given. The choices offered were:
- Financial incentives
- Discretionary benefit such as additional days off
- Donation to a charity of choice
Of particular importance to note is that the alternative rewards, especially that of donating money to charity were particularly powerful at enabling those who were already…
