Timing Matters: How Generative AI Impacts Creativity Through Motivation and Cognitive Processes

Abstract

In a rapidly evolving business environment, creativity is crucial for the sustainable growth of modern organizations. While Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has demonstrated unprecedented potential to streamline routine tasks and support high-value activities, its impact on creativity remains contested, hindering the widespread adoption of Generative AI in organizations, limiting its potential to enhance creative processes. Drawing on Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, rather than categorizing generative AI as beneficial or detrimental, this study adopts a more nuanced perspective that generative AI impacts different phases of the creative process depending on the time of its usage. In two experiments, the results reveal that early-stage AI usage in creative processes enhances novelty aspects of creativity via increased creative self-efficacy and divergent thinking, whereas late-stage AI usage enhances feasibility aspects of creativity via convergent thinking. These insights indicate that AI usage does not hinder creativity; rather, if used strategically, it could enhance specific creative characteristics in the idea generation process.

Ähnliche Arbeiten