prof. dr. B.A. (Bernard) Nijstad

Research

1. Creativity in organizations. In 2016, I received an NWO VICI grant (1.500 K euro) to study creativity and innovation in organizations. Research questions are: (1) how can organizations stimulate creativity of individuals and teams, and (2) how can creative ideas be used to realize (radical or incremental) innovation? Two PhD students (Gerben Tolkamp and Suqing Wu) and a postdoc (Bart Verwaeren) work on this project.

For this project, we are looking for interested organizations that want to participate in research and make better use of creativity in their organization. More information can be found at http://www.rug.nl/creativity.

2. Group indecision. The goal of this project is to find out when groups will not reach a decision, but postpone it. So far, this work has shown that this mainly occurs when group members enter the decision with negative opinions about the options, and when groups can not agree on the best choice. Effective leadership may be one way to overcome differences of opinion (and make a choice rather than postpone).

3. The dual pathway to creativity model. Creative ideas can be generated in two different ways: through flexible mindwandering and through effortful persistence. Together with Carsten de Dreu, Matthijs Baas, Marieke Roskes, and Daniel Sligte I study what factors influence the use of these pathways and their consequences. We study, for example, the role of mood states, functionality, power, extrinsic rewards, personality, cognitive capacity, and more.

4. Group creativity. With Carsten de Dreu, Myriam Bechtoldt, and Hoon-Seok Choi I study the factors that make groups more versus less creative. I also did some work on team innovation.

HRM expertise

I contribute to the HRM expertise institute, by giving lectures to people from the field. Examples are a workshop for top civil servants in the city of Amsterdam, a lecture during the conference of the Lean Operation Research Center (LO-RC) of this university, lectures for the VO Raad (secondary education council) on study choice, and lectures for companies on creativity and innovation.