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Prof Alex Gillespie QUE.3.03

This course is available on the CEMS Exchange, Global MSc in Management, Global MSc in Management (CEMS MIM), Global MSc in Management (MBA Exchange), MBA Exchange, MSc in Human Resources and Organisations (Organisational Behaviour), MSc in Marketing, MSc in Organisational and Social Psychology, MSc in Psychology of Economic Life, MSc in Social and Cultural Psychology and MSc in Social and Public Communication. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course is available to any graduate student within the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science. This course is available as an outside option to students' on other programmes were regulations permit.

An undergraduate degree in a social science related discipline or equivalent.

This course examines creativity and innovation from a social psychological standpoint. The first lectures of the course examine creativity, focusing on the social conditions which lead to new ideas. Then we will examine the way in which new ideas and technologies are instituted and resisted. The role of play and materiality in creative production are discussed next, followed by creative problem solving and the societal transmission of innovation. The course will end with a focus on societal creativity, utopias and imagining the future. Guiding questions will be: How do new ideas and technologies come about? What social contexts are conducive to creativity and innovation? Can the resistance to innovation lead to innovation? What is the human imagination? Why do humans enjoy play, games and fiction? What leads to insightful problem solving?  How does perspective-taking help us understand if something new is creative, productive or useful?

The course will cover the social conditions (i.e., face-to-face or online, one-to-one or group, autocratic or democratic, specialisation or integration, etc.) conductive to creativity and innovation, including the social conditions for socialisation creative individuals and the social and institutional factors which enable productive novelty to be recognised and instituted. Specific topics will include: theories of creativity, play & imagination, insight and problem solving, identifying good ideas, materiality, cultural evolution, the resistance to innovation, user innovation, utopias a