Resisting classical solutions: The creative mind of industrial designers and engineers

Marine Agogué, Pascal Le Masson (), Cédric Dalmasso (), Olivier Houdé and Mathieu Cassotti ()
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Marine Agogué: CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3 - Mines Paris - PSL (École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris) - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Pascal Le Masson: CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3 - Mines Paris - PSL (École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris) - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Cédric Dalmasso: CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3 - Mines Paris - PSL (École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris) - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Olivier Houdé: CI-NAPS - UMR 6232 - Centre-Imagerie, Neurosciences, et Application aux Pathologies - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - CEA - Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives - UPD5 - Université Paris Descartes - Paris 5 - INSERM - Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, IUF - Institut universitaire de France - M.E.N.E.S.R. - Ministère de l'Education nationale, de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche
Mathieu Cassotti: LaPsyDÉ - UMR 8240 - Laboratoire de psychologie du développement et de l'éducation de l'enfant - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UPD5 - Université Paris Descartes - Paris 5 - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CGS i3 - Centre de Gestion Scientifique i3 - Mines Paris - PSL (École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris) - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: Industrial designers and engineers are 2 types of individuals who are typically contrasted with regard to their creative capabilities. Regarding idea-generation processes, studies have shown that individuals use existing elements to generate new ideas, which constrains their creative thinking and leads them to only focus on a narrow scope of solutions. This article explores how industrial designers and engineers behave when generating creative ideas and resisting fixation (i.e., their propensity to focus on a limited set of ideas). We used a creative task in which participants were asked to design a solution that would prevent a hen's egg from breaking after being dropped from a height of 10 m. Our results show that engineers and industrial designers differ in their creative behaviors when they are asked to generate ideas in a creative task without any constraints. Industrial designers provide more answers and are less fixated than engineers. However, for both engineers and industrial designers, the introduction of an uncreative example reinforced the fixation effect and constrained participants' fluency. Specifically, industrial designers who were exposed to an uncreative example behaved similarly to engineers who were not exposed to this type of example.

Keywords: Fixation; Engineer; Industril designer (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-08-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-neu
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://minesparis-psl.hal.science/hal-01199938v1
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 2015, pp.10.1037/a0039414. ⟨10.1037/a0039414⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01199938

DOI: 10.1037/a0039414

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