Reddit led me to this Fast Company article,
which does a typical but enlightening job of exploding the conventional
wisdom of fostering and harnessing creativity in a corporate
environment. Some of the findings were obvious, some weren’t, but the overall
theme was rather subtle: corporations confuse creativity with productivity.
All of the classic (if draconian) methods for squeezing more
productivity out of workers–pay incentives, time pressure, downsizing,
an environment of fear–have an inverse effect on innovation. Thus, the
classic business axiom of “faster, better cheaper, you can have any two but
not three” still holds up. Common sense prevails, but at least now we
have the data to back it up.