From creativity to innovation: Understanding and improving the evaluation and selection of ideas in educational settings

Creativity gives students the ability to generate novel and useful ideas for complex problems, but generating creative ideas alone is not enough to solve complex problems. It requires that students are able to evaluate their own and others’ ideas, select ideas to develop further, and abandon those that are unlikely to be successful. However, prior research has shown that students do not recognize creative ideas and have a tendency to reject highly creative ideas, and are more likely to select ideas that are consistent with social norms, and easy to understand. The aim of this thesis is to investigate whether the evaluation and selection of ideas can be improved in educational settings. The research found that students’ ability to evaluate creativity in products depends strongly on their discipline. Furthermore, by exposing students to the task before evaluating others’ ideas they become better able to recognize the creative and original ideas. However, students discard original ideas immediately when they know that they have to implement those ideas.