Where to Look? Creative Self-Efficacy, Knowledge Retrieval, and Incremental and Radical Creativity

Although incremental creativity and radical creativity have been established as two distinct types of creativity, many questions remain about the antecedents and processes that result in these two types of creativity. This field study considered the impact of a motivational factor (creative self-efficacy), as well as factors that involve retrieving knowledge that may be applied toward a problem (scanning for information within the firm, scanning the environment external to the organization for new ideas, and cross-applying nonwork experiences to work) in efforts to determine whether they differentially relate to incremental and radical creativity. Results of a study conducted in eight organizations suggested support for a positive relationship between creative self-efficacy and radical creativity. Results also provided support for internal scanning (scanning within the organization for new ideas) as positively related to both incremental and radical creativity, but external scanning was only related to radical creativity. In addition, mediation analyses showed that external scanning partially mediated the effect of creative self-efficacy on radical creativity. One key implication of this study is that individuals who have a high level of creative self-efficacy can increase the likelihood that they will achieve radical creativity by scanning for information outside of their organization's boundaries.