The Contribution of Openness and Intellect to the Examination of the Idea Generation and Selection Processes: An Exploration with Business Students

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the contribution of two aspects, Openness and Intellect, of the broad personality factor of Openness to Experience to the explanation of idea generation and selection processes among business students. Participants completed a battery of questionnaires measuring Openness, Intellect, and creative self-efficacy. In addition, participants completed a divergent thinking task designed to help a company generate ideas to solve a business problem. Two indicators of creative potential, idea generation, and two indicators of intrapersonal idea evaluation and selection were used as our dependent variables. Results showed a positive influence of creative self-efficacy and Intellect on originality scores. Intellect had a positive relationship with the ratings of the best idea selected and evaluated by two independent judges. Regarding proxies of idea selection, whereas creative self-efficacy had positive relationship with an indicator reflecting the degree of overestimation or underestimation of the quality of participants’ ideas, Openness had a negative relationship. Hence, whereas creative self-efficacy was related to overestimating, Openness was related to underestimating the quality of participants’ ideas. Results showed the importance of separating Openness and Intellect given that they have differential relationships with the idea generation and selection processes.