Creativity Enhancement in Problem Solving: Through Software or Process?

This paper reports the results of a controlled laboratory experiment in which the work of Elam and Mead (Elam, J. J., M. Mead. 1990. Can software influence creativity? Inform. Systems Res. 1(1) 1--23.) was both replicated and extended to explore how knowledge and use of a creativity-enhancing process employed both manually and delivered via computer software affect the level of creativity in response to a problem-solving task. The results suggest the enhancement of creativity in response to open-ended problems is significantly affected by the process employed by the decision maker rather than the vehicle by which the process is delivered. Further, the results indicate that the capability of a decision support system (DSS) to provide directed guidance in the application of a process combined with user knowledge of the underlying process model improves creativity enhancement over use of either the DSS or the process alone.