Product creativity assessment of innovations: considering the creative process

Creativity is a critical component that feeds into all stages of innovation and design processes by promoting inspiration, ideation, and implementation of ideas, revealing the need for thorough research to support design creativity. Assessment of product creativity is a reoccurring topic in creativity research, while the role of consumer’s knowledge of the creative process behind the product is fairly unexplored. In this paper, we present an empirical study investigating whether providing information about a complex development process could amplify consumer’s perception of product creativity. Does storytelling about the process contribute to amplifying creativity ratings? What form of storytelling is needed to make an impact? Results from 134 respondents showed a small but not significant amplifying effect from the additional process information; however, an important learning can be drawn about the form of storytelling needed. An absolute minimal form was chosen here, displaying the need for investigating other, more elaborate forms. Additionally, the analysis showed that creativity was an important driver for the assessment of other product attributes such as purchasability, portraying the importance of design creativity and underlining the importance of further investigating the role of creative process information in amplifying consumer’s perception of creativity in products.