Encyclopedia of Geropsychology

DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-080-3_202-1
# Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2015

Workplace Creativity, Innovation, and Age

Eric F. Rietzschel* and Hannes Zacher
University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

Synonyms
Adaptation; Change; Invention; Originality

Definition
Creativity is the generation of ideas that are both novel and appropriate. Innovation is the subsequent
intentional implementation of those ideas.
While work performance is a complex and multifaceted construct (Viswevaran 2001), one of the most
coveted and elusive dimensions of work performance is creative and innovative performance. Organizations look for ways to stimulate (or at least not hinder) their employees creative and innovative
performance, because this will it is believed contribute to individual, team, and organizational success
(Gilson 2008). Since the workforce is aging and will continue to do so over the next decades, organizations need to know what ramications if any this demographic change will have for their innovative
potential. The goal of this entry, therefore, is to examine relationships between employee age and
workplace creativity and innovation.

Overview of This Entry

This entry consists of four main parts. First, the concepts of creativity and innovation are dened. Second,
the entry briey discusses the common belief that older employees are less creative and innovative,
followed by a summary of the actual empirical state of affairs regarding direct, zero-order relationships
between age and creativity and innovation. Third, our entry takes a closer look at two broad themes within
the literature on creativity and innovation (motivation and group creativity) and describes some ways in
which aging and age-related processes might t within these perspectives. Finally, an important direction
for future research is pointed out.

Defining Creativity and Innovation

Creativity is commonly dened as the generation of ideas that are both novel (i.e., original or surprising)
and appropriate (i.e., useful or feasible within a particular context) (Amabile 1996). Thus, employees
show creative performance to the extent that they generate and contribute (e.g., to their team or
organization) original and useful ideas. Then again, ideas by themselves are not enough; what organizations aim for, in the end, is innovation, which has been dened as the intentional introduction and
application within a job, work team or organization of ideas, processes, products or procedures which are
new to that job, work team or organization and which are designed to benet the job, the work team or the
*Email: e.f.rietzschel@rug.nl
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Encyclopedia of Geropsychology
DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-080-3_202-1
# Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2015

organization (West and Farr 1990). In sum, creativity is about the generation and contribution of new and
useful ideas, whereas innovation entails the actual implementation of those ideas. Creativity, then, is a
necessary but insufcient condition for innovation to occur (West 2002).

Are Older Employees Less Creative and Innovative?

There is a pervasive belief that older employees are less creative and innovative than their younger
colleagues. Older employees are also often believed to be less exible, less open to change, and less
motivated (e.g., Ng and Feldman 2012; Shearring 1992). The general picture that emerges does not bode
well for older employees. Indeed, it cannot be disputed that aging does bring about changes in cognitive,
affective, and physical functioning and motivation (e.g., Salthouse 2012) and that some of these changes
might plausibly be related to lower creativity. For example, measures of uid cognitive abilities, such as
novel problem-solving, show a clear and substantial linear age-related decline (Salthouse 2012). Given
that the ability to solve new problems is crucial for creativity, it may seem plausible that this would
translate into lower creativity and innovation among older employees. Moreover, it could be argued that
negative age-related stereotypes have a detrimental effect on older employees creative and innovative
performance because they undermine relevant self-efcacy beliefs. Interestingly, however, a generally
negative relation between age and creative or innovative performance is not what emerges from the
empirical literature.
Although empirical work on age and work has increased enormously in the past decade (e.g., Hertel and
Zacher 2016), to date there have been relatively few studies that actually focus on age and creativity and
innovative performance in work settings, despite calls for such studies (Shearring 1992). Nevertheless,
several studies have measured age as a predictor or, in most cases, as a covariate, and other studies on age
in the work context have measured creativity or innovation as relevant aspects of work performance,
which made meta-analytical work possible. A rst meta-analysis on studies addressing the relationship of
age to several dimensions of job performance, including creativity, found that age had zero relationships
with self- and supervisor ratings of creativity (Ng and Feldman 2008). A second meta-analysis by the
same authors examined bivariate relationships between age and innovation-related behavior, such as idea
generation (i.e., creativity), idea dissemination (the selling of ideas to stakeholders), and idea implementation (Ng and Feldman 2013). Results again showed that age was largely unrelated to innovationrelated behaviors (neither linear nor nonlinear associations emerged).
These meta-analytical ndings, which are mainly based on cross-sectional data, should not lead to the
conclusion that employee age and aging are completely irrelevant to creativity and innovation. Although
very few primary studies have actually focused on age and creativity, those that have suggest that the
relationship between age and creativity/innovation is not a simple, zero-order relationship, but is
moderated by other individual and contextual factors, such as individual differences in personality,
job-related resources, and contextual characteristics. For instance, a study found that the relationship
between employee age and creativity was positive when job autonomy was high (Binnewies et al. 2008).
Empirical studies such as those reviewed above are still relatively scarce, but it seems clear that an
understanding of the relation between aging and creativity/innovation will require a more sophisticated
approach than merely studying direct or zero-order relationships. One particularly fruitful strategy for
aging research would be to focus on specic topics or domains within the creativity and innovation
literatures, because these might suggest concrete moderating and mediating variables of the
age-creativity/innovation relationships. The following section addresses two themes that seem particularly promising: motivation and group creativity.

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Encyclopedia of Geropsychology
DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-080-3_202-1
# Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2015

Motivation and Need Fulfillment

One of the most important and fruitful lines of (basic) research on creativity and innovation concerns the
role of motivation. Broadly speaking, the consensus is that intrinsic motivation, or the motivation to
engage in an activity for its own sake, because one enjoys it, is important and benecial for creative
performance (Amabile 1996). In contrast, the role of extrinsic motivation, or the motivation to engage in
an activity to attain or avoid a particular outcome (such as a reward or a punishment), is more complex: it
can both stimulate and stie creativity (Byron and Khazanchi 2012). Overall, the literature shows that
contextual factors (such as rewards) that make employees feel controlled (i.e., less autonomous) are likely
to stie creativity through a decrease in intrinsic motivation.
In this line of research, work environments are thought to be conducive to intrinsic motivation (and
hence creativity) to the extent that they contribute to (vs. thwart) the fulllment of employees psychological needs (such as the need for autonomy or the need for competence). External motivators such as
rewards can easily detract from intrinsic motivation, because they can cause employees to attribute their
efforts primarily to the reward, rather than to their own task interest, and hence threaten need fulllment
regarding autonomy (Amabile 1996). Rewards are not necessarily controlling, however; when rewards
are made contingent upon creative performance, they can actually stimulate creativity (Byron and
Khazanchi 2012).
Such motivational issues probably are particularly important for older employees, because research
suggests that older employees are not necessarily motivated by the same things as younger employees,
due to, for instance, age-related changes in time horizons and experiences. For example, older employees
tend to attach less weight to nancial rewards and more to the sense of satisfaction they can derive from
the work itself and to job characteristics such as autonomy (Kooij et al. 2011). In other words, the classic
nding that creativity is stimulated by intrinsic motivation and likely to be hindered by controlling
circumstances would appear to hold particularly strongly for older employees. Thus, organizations that
wish to stimulate creativity among their older employees should pay even closer attention to job
characteristics such as autonomy. Initial empirical support for this notion comes from a study reported
in Binnewies et al. (2008), which found that the relationship between age and creativity at work was
positive only when job autonomy was high.
Moreover, to the extent that extrinsic motivators such as nancial incentives can motivate employees to
perform creatively (Byron and Khazanchi 2012), this will probably be less effective for those employees
who nd such rewards relatively unimportant, such as older employees. Further, Kooij et al. (2011) found
that age was negatively related to self-reported extrinsic motives (e.g., benets and promotions) and workrelated growth motives (e.g., training or learning opportunities). In contrast, age was positively related to
work-related intrinsic motives (e.g., a sense of accomplishment and autonomy). All in all, it seems that
older employees simply are not motivated or demotivated by the same factors as their younger colleagues.
Thus, motivational effects on creativity and innovation are highly likely to depend on employee age and,
by extension, the same is likely to be true for the effects of contextual factors that inuence employee
motivation.

Team Creativity and Age Diversity

Another line of research has looked into the benets and risks of team or group collaboration in creative
efforts and the factors determining the success or failure of such collective endeavors (see Paulus and
Nijstad 2003 for a collection of overviews). One reason why group collaboration is thought to enhance
creativity and innovation is because of the potential for cognitive stimulation: group or team members
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Encyclopedia of Geropsychology
DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-080-3_202-1
# Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2015

have different knowledge, experiences, and opinions, and this could in theory stimulate divergent
processing and creative decision-making.
In fact, research on group creativity and group decision-making shows that groups tend to perform
below their potential and often fail to make effective use of the divergent expertise and perspectives that
are available (Paulus and Nijstad 2003). Demographic or surface diversity in particular seems to be
problematic for groups; it has been found to relate to subgroup formation, within-group conict,
supercial information processing/exchange, and lower creative performance (Paulus and Nijstad 2003).
Other researchers, however, point to the possible advantages that come along with having a team
comprised of members from diverse age groups. For example, when team members differ from each other
in age and age-related characteristics, they are likely to also have different networks of communication
outside the team (Joshi and Jackson 2003), which in turn could stimulate team innovation. Further, in
addition to their unique expertise and experience, older team members may have more time to help and
mentor their younger colleagues (Wegge et al. 2008). Moreover, when a workgroup consists of employees
of the same age, these may in effect be competing for the same resources (such as promotion opportunities). The presence of older team members who are not (or no longer) competing for these scarce
resources may contribute to a more positive atmosphere and enhanced creativity within the team (Choi
2007).
Thus, like other forms of team diversity, age diversity is a double-edged sword, presenting both
opportunities and threats for team creativity and innovation. Further, it seems that, overall, these
opportunities and threats may cancel each other out: in a meta-analysis of research on demographic
diversity and team performance, Bell et al. (2011) found no relation between age diversity and team
performance (although no specic results were reported on the relation between age diversity and
creativity or innovation). Thus, the question once again does not seem to be whether age diversity is a
good thing or not, but rather under which circumstances it contributes to team creativity and innovation or
not. In other words, what might be relevant moderators of the relations between age diversity and team
creativity/innovation? A particularly important moderator seems to lie in the way age/aging and age
diversity themselves are viewed within the team, something we already alluded to above. In the following,
this issue is addressed in some more detail.

Age Stereotypes and Diversity Beliefs

Research on age stereotypes suggests that employees have specic expectations of their older colleagues.
As discussed above, older employees are commonly seen as less creative and innovative. Such stereotypes are potentially problematic, because they can become self-fullling prophecies and threats to the
self-concept that impact on employees actual performance. This could take place through mechanisms on
the individual level and the team level.
Individual Level: Stereotype Threat. At the individual level, older employees may experience
so-called stereotype threats which could undermine their creative and innovative behavior in the
workplace (Walton et al. 2015). Stereotype threat has been dened as the concern of conrming or
being reduced to a negative stereotype about ones social group (Steele and Aronson 1995). It is
particularly likely to occur on difcult and nonroutine tasks and has been found to cause people to
underperform on a variety of tasks and tests, including organization-relevant behaviors such as learning,
feedback seeking, interpersonal behavior, and task performance (Walton et al. 2015).
Several subtle or not-so-subtle cues in the work environment could give rise to stereotype threat, for
example, when ideas expressed by older employees are responded to differently, when older employees

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Encyclopedia of Geropsychology
DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-080-3_202-1
# Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2015

are underrepresented in organizations or in project teams working on innovation projects, or when the
organization implicitly equates innovative with young or a new generation. Sometimes such cues
are not easy to remedy immediately; for example, if an organization has neglected to hire an age-diverse
workforce, older employees will for some time be confronted with the cue that age diversity is not valued,
even if the organization aims to remedy this by changing its hiring policies (Walton et al. 2015). In such
situations, what might be important is for the organization or team to emphasize the value it places on age
diversity, in other words, by stressing certain diversity beliefs.
Team Level: Diversity Beliefs. At the group or team level, negative age stereotypes are incompatible
with the positive diversity beliefs that are necessary to make effective use of diversity (e.g., Homan
et al. 2010). Thus, workgroups and teams where people hold the stereotypical belief that older employees
have little to offer in the way of creativity and innovation will be less likely to consider age diversity an
asset and hence will be less likely to reap any potential associated benets. For example, such groups
might be less likely to seriously consider ideas put forward by older employees or even to discourage these
employees from participating in the creative process. Given that the potential for cognitive stimulation
stemming from a diverse knowledge base is one of the reasons for using teams and workgroups in the rst
place, it should be clear that this is something to avoid. As discussed above, one of the main stumbling
blocks in groups effective use of diversity lies in social categorization and the formation of subgroups
(Paulus and Nijstad 2003; Homan et al. 2010). Groups that hold positive diversity beliefs, however,
appear to view diversity not so much in terms of subgroups, but rather in terms of individual
differences implying that the group is composed of unique individuals who may each have something
worthwhile to offer (Homan et al. 2010), which in turn is likely to enhance group creativity.

Future Research
As noted above, as well as by other researchers, more research on age and creativity/innovation is needed.
The two sections above illustrate how a more ne-grained approach, focusing on specic creativity/
innovation-relevant phenomena or processes, may yield more informative empirical results (or more negrained hypotheses) and may help link the budding eld of age and creativity/innovation to existing
theories from social and organizational psychology. One topic that has already been alluded to above, and
that has been neglected for a long time, is the relation between creativity, or the generation of ideas, and
innovation, or the implementation of these ideas.
Idea Implementation. Although creativity is, of course, a necessary condition for innovation, research
shows that it is by no means sufcient and that reaping the benets of creative ideas is a unique challenge
in itself (West and Farr 1990; Anderson et al. 2014). Little empirical research thus far has addressed the
factors that contribute to successful idea implementation, although individual characteristics, such as
networking abilities, and team process characteristics, such as team climate, have been found to play a
role. One question that is sometimes raised is whether the more extensive experience and domain
knowledge of older employees might not put them in a better position when it comes to successfully
selling and implementing their ideas. Again, there is very little data on this, but an important exception
can be found in historiometric creativity research, which has led Simonton (1997) to formulate the equal
odds rule.
Basically, according to this rule, the relation between the total number of works produced in a given
period (e.g., a career) and the number of hits (i.e., highly successful products, which would include
successful innovation attempts) tends to be linear and stable. One implication of this (empirically derived)
rule is that individuals do not seem to necessarily get better at realizing implementation or adoption of

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Encyclopedia of Geropsychology
DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-080-3_202-1
# Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2015

their creative ideas; instead, what seems to matter (over time) is total productivity. Although
historiometric research suggests that productivity shows an inverted U-shaped pattern across careers or
life spans, the meta-analytical results described above suggest that it is far from clear that such a pattern
will always hold (although most of the research included in those meta-analyses is cross-sectional and/or
limited in age range). All in all, only very little is known about the relation between creativity and
innovation, let alone the possible moderating role of age.

Conclusion
In this entry, the relationship between employee age and creative and innovative performance at work was
discussed. While meta-analytical work suggests that, overall, younger and older employees do not differ
with regard to creativity and innovation, primary empirical studies suggest that the relationships are more
complex and inuenced by various individual and contextual moderators. It was argued that individual
motivation (i.e., intrinsic needs) and team-level characteristics (e.g., climate for aging at work) may play a
particularly important role in shaping the creative and innovative performance of older employees or
teams with older employees. This does not mean that there are no other relevant factors or processes,
rather the opposite. This review has inevitably been limited and selective. What is clear, however, is that
the role of age in creativity and innovation at work has, thus far, received far too little attention. This is also
witnessed by the fact that primary studies do not routinely report even zero-order correlations between age
and creative or innovative behavior (which makes meta-analytical work unnecessarily difcult and
limited). Given the existence of negative age stereotypes, the strong evidence that such stereotypes may
have devastating effects on employee well-being and (creative) performance, and the fact that metaanalytical and primary empirical work fails to yield strong support for these stereotypes (if not the
opposite), it is high time to remedy this.

Cross-References
Age Stereotypes in the Workplace
Age-Related Changes in Abilities
Entrepreneurship and Aging
Job Crafting in Aging Employees
Technology and Older Workers
Training at Work and Aging

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