Creativity can be a fragile endeavor, and so it’s perhaps understandable that in an ideal world the creative mind/s behind an idea would see it through to fruition so that their vision remains pure and unsullied.  In reality, however, that might not happen, and we may be working on someone else’s idea.

A recent paper from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business explores such a scenario.  The article suggests that when we hand an idea to someone else to execute, it ultimately harms the creativity of the final product.  A far better approach is to ensure that the originator of the idea is involved throughout the development of the project.

Seeing it through

The researchers chose the film industry to conduct their study and focused on 5,700 or so films released since 1915 in the United States.  They were able to hone in on who had the idea, who wrote the screenplay, and then who directed the film and brought it to the screen.  Alongside this, they analyzed the critics’ score on the Rotton Tomatoes website to gauge the quality of the end product.

The analysis revealed that when directors worked on a movie that had been written by someone else, the films were rated as less creative than when the same people were involved from the beginning.

They followed up this initial finding with a second experiment in which volunteers were asked to develop an advert for pretzels made with cricket flour.  The process involved a handoff at various stages, with some teams involved throughout and others receiving ideas much later on.  This process revealed quite why late handoffs are so harmful to creativity.

Shaping the ideas

The process showed that when people get given ideas fairly late on in the process, they miss out on the opportunity to shape the ideas they’ve been given.  This in turn means that they lack any real psychological ownership or vision for the idea, which reduces its ultimate creativity.  As such, the authors believe late handoffs should be avoided wherever possible.

“If you’re working on something creative, you can certainly receive the project as a handoff, but it shouldn’t be too late in the process,” they say. “Make sure you’re not handing over a mature idea for someone to implement, as you cut off the opportunity for them to develop psychological ownership and a coherent vision, which are key ingredients for turning creative ideas into creative final products.”

Suffice to say, there are caveats to this general hypothesis, with psychological ownership from the outset running the risk of becoming too protective of an idea and therefore stifling its evolution.  There are also circumstances in which a late handoff can be the best approach, especially if particular skills are required to implement the idea.

“If you already have a mature idea and realize that unique skills are needed to implement it, handing the idea off to someone with the requisite skills may be worth it,” the researchers explain.

In the main, however, the study is clear that we should try and avoid late handoffs where possible if we want our ideas to maintain their creative luster.