Management Practices and Creativity

Teresa Amabile, a Harvard Business School professor, recently started a new thread of discussion centered on the question: "Is Management the Enemy of Creativity?" Here is the problem she posed:

There's a crisis in corporate management. While the basis of competition has shifted decisively to innovation, most management tools and approaches are still geared to exploit established ideas rather than explore new ones.

Perhaps that's why corporate acquisitions have reached such high levels over the past decade. Creativity takes root in entrepreneurial ventures, and big companies, unable to cultivate it within their own walls, end up buying it instead.

The solution she proposed is not to ditch management altogether, but to reinvent it in such a way that management practices are able to engage as many people from diverse backgrounds as possible to jump on board solving problems with creative ideas. The post understanably receives many commments, one of which points to research in Neuroscience which provides a reason why creativity and management practices are strange bedfellows.

Management practices have historically been rooted in analysis and a linear approach in an effort to attain a level of predictability [whereas]... creativity is rooted in dissonance and breaking predictable patterns