Evaluation of a Creative Idea: The Effects of Cross-Cultural Differences in Cognition on the Assessment of an Idea’s Overall Value

Creativity and Innovation have become critical organizational capabilities in today’s global environment and leveraging creative potential of employees across various cultural contexts has become increasingly important. Although recognized among researchers, cross-cultural differences in creativity are not yet well understood. We contribute to this line of research by proposing and testing a model of cross-cultural creativity that focuses on cultural differences in cognition that affect the evaluation of creative ideas. Specifically, we highlight differences in relative importance of the key dimensions of creativity, novelty and usefulness, and establish how each contributes to the overall judgement of an idea. The results of our study indicate that evaluation of an idea is largely driven by usefulness considerations with novelty having a mixed and limited effect. Moreover, we found that the effect of usefulness on idea evaluation is influenced by individual’s cognitive style, which impacts overall assessment of an idea.