LEIF DENTI

Leif Denti is pursuing his doctoral degree of Psychology at the University of Gothenburg, Department of Psychology. His main research venue is how project leaders stimulate creativity and innovation in their project teams (project name: Management for Sweden). Leif Denti also works as a consultant at Prospero Technology Management. Leif Denti holds a licentiate degree in Psychology at the University of Gothenburg.

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Leaders’ Dual Roles When Managing Innovation

Leaders have dual roles when managing innovation. In a bottom-up role, they stimulate innovative results as they facilitate ideas and initiative coming from individuals and teams. In a top-down role, leaders are the primary means for the organization to realize its innovation goals and strategies. A fundamental challenge is to balance these two roles.

Top Six Components of a Creative Climate

Are you thinking about ways to transform your workplace into an environment more conducive to innovation? This article takes a closer look at six components of creative climates that have shown to be significant at facilitating creativity according to new research.

Measuring Innovation part 2: Dark Innovation

Many activities in organizations that are considered innovative risk being missed if we solely use the standard toolkit to measure innovation. In this article we will look at three types of scales that measure intangible aspects of innovation that are easily added to the toolkit of any organization.

Measuring Innovation part 1: Frequently Used Indicators

One of the most common questions people ask me is how I measure innovation when conducting my research. The question echoes an underlying concern about how innovation can be captured and adequately measured. In this article I delineate the most frequently used innovation indicators, their strengths, and their drawbacks.

Two Cultural Values that May Shape Personal Innovativeness

How do cultural values influence innovative thinking and behaviors? There has been some research but the field is still young. In this article I attempt to summarize the current thinking regarding two cultural values and their implications for personal innovativeness.

Role Modeling Creativity: “They don’t do what you say, they do what you do”

The maxim quoted in the title is famous for Swedish parents and essentially means that words can only take your teachings that far. But does this maxim extend to the work context? In this article, aimed at managers and leaders in organizations, we will examine the concept of creative role models and see how leaders can use themselves to leverage creativity in their teams.

Believing is Seeing: The Pygmalion Effect and Creativity

In this post we will look at something that all leaders who are students of creativity should know: how to harness the self-fulfilling prophecy as a tool to facilitate creativity. The Pygmalion effect is a phenomenon which effectiveness in stimulating creativity is only surpassed by its simplicity.

Conflict in Teams – Does it Stimulate Creativity & Innovation?

Conflict is a dreaded word. Most people associate conflict with interpersonal clashes ranging from inelegant avoidance tactics in the breakroom to fierce and open hostility. Surely, it is obvious that conflict in teams is detrimental to creativity and innovation. But is it? In this post we will explore this matter further and see when conflict sometimes can enhance the creative thinking skills of teams.

Cognitive Biases Inhibiting Innovation in Top Management Teams

The top management team of an organization is arguably the most important team for deciding and implementing innovation strategies. They typically decide which markets to be entered, which markets to be exited, and which new technologies to pursue. But decision making is fraught with biases – errors in judgment that affect the quality of decisions. Sometimes with devastating results. In this post we will see how basic human psychology affects the decision making of top management teams.

Expertise and its Role in Innovative Problem Solving

The nature of problems in innovative work is that they are often ill defined, novel to the individual who engaged them, and complex in that often several solutions exist to the same problem. In this post we will see how expertise is an important factor in innovative problem solving, and how leaders and organizations can cultivate R&D team expertise.

The Team Diversity Sweet Spot

Team diversity is conducive to innovation. When R&D project teams are composed of people with different skills, competencies and knowledge, the likelihood for new thinking and innovative solutions increase. However, too much diversity may lead to breakdown in communication and ensuing conflict. There is a sweet spot in how much diversity R&D teams should have.

Rewarding Creativity: 3 Lessons on When it Works

It is well known that intrinsic motivation–the kind that comes from working with a task because it's interesting, involving and challenging–has the strongest relationship with individual creativity. Extrinsic motivation–especially based on monetary rewards–has a detrimental effect on creativity. But is this really true? In this article, we'll explore how to reward creativity and realize that everything may not be as it seems.