Study On Designers’ Driving Forces For Creativity

With the rapid development of creative economy and the increasing growth ofcreative industries, creative design has become an important component in thedevelopment of core competitiveness of enterprises, even in the establishment of theinnovation system of a nation. Widely recognized in macro sense as principalparticipants of creative design activities, designers are also individuals contributive tothe formation of design teams, design organizations as well as the design industry.Conducting a study on the creativity of designers not only helps solve the problem ofhow to drive their creativity performance from the front end, but also forms a basisand starting point for studies on relevant subjects, such as improvement of creativitycompetitiveness of design organizations and creativity of design industries.Study on creativity has its distinctive domain specificity, which is manifested indiversified requirements in capabilities and qualities proposed to creation subjects indifferent fields of creative activities. Moreover, there are certain differences in qualityand quantity for external environmental factors, which exert influences in creativityof creation subjects. Therefore, a study on designers’ creativity on one hand requirestheoretical results from psychology, management and creativity studies as itsanalytical framework, and on the other hand, needs a thorough and deepunderstanding of the inherent laws and defining features of creative activities in thedesign domain. Based on this foundation, the author, in his study, reduced positivefactors in inspiring designers’ creativity from individual and situational perspectivesto two subsystems: internal drive and external drive for creativity. The system ofinternal drive for creativity included five factors, namely, intelligence, knowledge andskills, creative personalities, thinking styles and intrinsic motivation. The system ofexternal drive for creativity covered work flexibility, team atmosphere and structure,supply of design resources, target attribute and extrinsic motivation. An integratedand open theoretical system was established on the basis of the above-mentioned twosystems, reflecting how designers’ inherent qualities and environments inside andoutside their design organizations provide supports for them in carrying out creativedesign activities, and providing a solid theoretical foundation for the fullerunderstanding of designers’ creativity compositions and origins of their performances. Besides, in this study, which was based on the implicit theories of creativity asits paradigm, an empirical study on local designers was carried out for verifying therationality of extracting driving factors, and describing demand characteristics andsupply status of local designers’ driving forces for creativity in a more accurate andquantitive way. The study results show that, both supply and demand for drivingforces for creativity, to some extent, differ in designers with different age, sex andcompanies of different sizes. However, local designers’ demands for all kinds offactors have reached a high level on the whole, especially those for extrinsicmotivation, knowledge and skills, and team atmosphere and structure, which arestrongest of all others. For supplies, distinctive discrepancies could be found in thesupply status and level of demand of most driving forces for creativity, particularly infive aspects including work flexibility, extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation,supply of design resources and knowledge and skills where contradictions arehighlighted. The author suggests that the result reflects not only the reality of a poorindustrial ecology at the macro level, but also many problems caused by deficienciesin professional management.The study at the end suggests that active engagement of diversified participantsdoes play an important role in the optimization of creativity performance of localdesigners, however, the most practical and feasible solution to the current problemsand contradictions, in the short term, lies in improving the micro-individual externalenvironment of designers by introducing scientific management methods. Based onthe prospective of design management, the study hereto proposed severalmanagement strategies and suggestions from five aspects of knowledge management,organizational cultures, human resources, motivation mechanism and organizationalstructures, thereby providing theoretical guidelines and references for practices oflocal designers and local design managers. Meanwhile, the study further identifiesthat management to creativity should not be deemed as some negative intervention orconstraint, but to some extent a positive guidance and driving force.