Amabile’s Model of Creativity

Amabile’s model of creativity contains two “can” factors (domain skills and creativity skills) and one “try” factor (internal motivation) that affect the performance in an organizational setting.

Amabile identified 5 environmental components that affect creativity in the workplace:

• Encouragement of creativity (which encompasses open information flow and support for new ideas at all levels of the organization, from top management, thru immediate supervisors, to work groups)
• Autonomy or freedom (autonomy in the day-to-day conduct of work, a sense of individual ownership of and control over work)
• Resources (the materials, information and general resources available for work)
• Pressures (including both positive challenge and negative workload pressures)
• Organizational impediments to creativity (including conservatism and internal strife)