Enhancing creative knowledge‐work: challenges and points of leverage

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore critical success factors in knowledge‐intensive creative project work, using product development as an example field. Design/methodology/approach – Critical‐incident based in‐depth interviews of 11 product development experts (chosen based on their recommendations and length of experience) were carried out. The results were categorized into thematic classes of critical factors. Findings – Most challenges are embedded in the context of the product development projects. Collaboration and cognitive‐motivational factors such as trust, attitude, and intrinsic motivation‐related issues formed the most common classes of discovered critical factors behind product development project success, along with the mediating categories of goal and autonomy‐related factors. Furthermore, product development specific skills or knowledge accounted only for a small minority of the identified factors. Practical implications – The most pressing learning objective becomes not updating product development knowledge, but that of increasing motivation, initiative, trust, and collaboration. As the discovered challenges are embedded in the context of work, addressing them ultimately requires project managers to master some of the personnel development aspects traditionally left for human resources management. Training efforts need to be tailored to the project context if they are to have a lasting impact on behavior. Originality/value – In addition to providing further support for the importance of climate factors, this paper suggests that special attention should be directed towards goal setting and autonomy, as they play a significant role in many of the climate and cognitive‐motivational constructs increasing creativity.