CIR: Fostering collective creativity

Abstract

Nowadays, society and organizations face an accelerated innovation that requires of professionals with new skills and attitudes, especially those related to collective creativity. However, educational environments are slowly integrating emerging paradigms limiting the contribution to the development of key skills related to innovation. Multiple investigations claim that teachers have conservative attitudes toward collaborative schemes, while employers generally recognize the effectiveness of creativity at work. Management of ideas is the core of creativity in innovation processes in the industry and in production and service management. This depends largely on the collective work and individual social skills, as well as on the capabilities that information technology and communication ICT provide. This article presents a process of collective ideas refinement CIR. This process combines paradigms of swarm creativity and social skills as a means to capture the participants’ emotions and evaluate the acceptability of ideas. We believe that it is necessary to use new forms of teaching and learning based on swarm creativity paradigms, on individual social skills, and on the use of ICT. Therefore, CIR is a tool that could become an effective way to encourage creativity in individuals.