Developing information systems with creativity techniques: An exploratory study

Abstract

Identifies creative measures for information systems development. Content analysis was used as a methodology for analyzing key attributes to distinguish between creative and less creative IS applications. 20 descriptions of information systems and the development process, published in 'Information & Management'-an international academic journal-served as the source for exploration. From a list of 43 possible keyword synonyms used to describe the novelty and value of creative products and services, 16 keywords and their derivations were chosen for study. The articles were scanned, cleaned and stored with a high rate of accuracy. A team of 3 raters were engaged for the project, rating the occurrence of each keyword in context. Inter-rater agreement scores all reflected acceptable reliabilities greater than 0.70. Summary statistics were used to evaluate average rater scores, average rating per article, total number of keywords per article, and other statistics useful to developing creativity measures. The average number of keywords per page was found to be an important variable, correlating highly with other key indicators. Expert judges' opinions were not found to add additional value to the raters' evaluations, lending evidence that the raters' evaluation of creativity were valid. Using the results from the correlation analysis, a metric for assessing the creativity in information systems development is suggested.