Translating Proactive and Responsive Creativity to Innovation Implementation in Work

Given that unrealized creative ideas are useless, this study focuses on intermediate mechanisms that connect idea generation to implementation in work teams. We propose that creative ideas based on proactive and responsive motivation may activate different resources to affect implementation. Using a sample of 62 teams from US organizations, this research shows that when teams generate creative ideas proactively, they can easily mobilize internal resources (i.e., team implementation efficacy and cooperation), but they have difficulty securing external resources (i.e., external resource acquisition and external legitimacy). Conversely, when teams generate creative ideas responsively, they are advantageous in acquiring external resources but are disadvantageous in developing internal resources needed for innovation implementation. Innovation implementation of work teams is predicted by internal resources (team implementation efficacy and cooperation) and external resources (external resource acquisition). The present analysis explores an important but largely neglected phenomenon of the connection between idea generation and implementation and offer new theoretical and practical insights into underlying mechanisms of realizing the benefit of team creativity.