Jack Goncalo on What Organizations Get Wrong About Creativity—And What It's Costing Them

Why It Matters

Organizations miss critical innovation by rejecting unfamiliar ideas; reshaping culture to embrace uncertainty can unlock measurable competitive advantage.

Key Takeaways

• Leaders claim creativity, yet subconsciously reject novel ideas.
• Implicit bias links creativity with negative concepts like “vomit.”
• Uncertainty drives preference for familiar, “Diet Coke” creativity.
• Political correctness norms can boost gender-diverse group creativity.
• Confident narcissists spark ideas, but risk poor content quality.

Summary

Jack Goncalo, a leading scholar on organizational creativity, explains why companies that loudly champion innovative cultures often sabotage the very ideas they need. Drawing on a series of experiments, he shows a stark gap between executives’ verbal endorsement of creativity and their unconscious rejection of truly novel proposals.

Using an Implicit Association Test, Goncalo finds that participants more quickly associate the word “creativity” with negative terms such as “vomit” and “poison.” In practice, leaders gravitate toward safe, familiar solutions—what Goncalo calls the “Diet Coke” of creativity—especially during periods of high uncertainty when fresh ideas are most required.

A vivid anecdote illustrates the stakes: Goncalo’s father was forced into early retirement after challenging Intel CEO Andy Grove with a dissenting suggestion. Conversely, his research on political correctness reveals that explicit PC norms, unlike politeness or sensitivity cues, reduce interpersonal uncertainty in mixed‑gender groups, allowing both men and women to share bolder ideas. He also notes that narcissistic team members, while not inherently more creative, can inject confidence that emboldens others, though their contributions may lack substance.

The findings imply that managers must redesign idea‑evaluation processes, surface hidden biases, and cultivate environments where uncertainty is managed rather than avoided. Leveraging constructive confidence and clear, inclusive norms can unlock the creative potential that organizations currently suppress.

Original Description

Most organizations say they want to foster creativity. But decades of research by Jack Goncalo, PhD 04, reveals they misunderstand it in fundamental ways: Leaders often implicitly reject novel ideas and penalize creative people when they’re up for leadership roles. 

In our Season 5 kickoff, Goncalo unpacks the science behind why—and shares some genuinely counterintuitive findings: the conditions we think suppress creativity sometimes do the opposite. And the costs of creative work? They show up in places no one is tracking—including what your employees might eat and drink after a big brainstorm.

Goncalo joins organizational culture experts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava to discuss why the bias against creativity is worst precisely when organizations need it most, why constraints and even social rejection can actually fuel original thinking, and why asking people to be creative all day has downstream consequences leaders aren't accounting for.

Read the transcript: https://haas.berkeley.edu/culture/culture-kit-podcast/posts/jack-goncalo-on-what-organizations-get-wrong-about-creativity-and-what-its-costing-them/

Jenny & Sameer’s 3 Main Takeaways:

1. When building teams, look for the people who have a history of not fitting in or seeing things the way everyone else sees them.

2. Build norms, not just freedom:  provide a framework that guides people and gives them a set of expectations that make them feel comfortable sharing their creative ideas. 

3. Create fair and deliberate processes for assessing novel ideas that counteracts any evaluation bias.

Show Links:

• Jack Goncalo faculty bio (https://giesbusiness.illinois.edu/profile/jack-goncalo) at Gies College of Business

• The bias against creativity: Why people desire but reject creative ideas (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797611421018) (Psychological Science)

• Creativity from constraint? How political correctness influences creativity in mixed-sex work groups (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0001839214563975) (Administrative Science Quarterly)

• Outside advantage: Can social rejection fuel creative thought? (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-22061-001) (Journal of Experimental Psychology)

• Your soul spills out: The creative act feels self-disclosing (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167219873480) (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin)

• Are two narcissists better than one? The link between narcissism, perceived creativity and creative performance (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167210385109) (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin)

• Creativity Connects: Generating Creative Ideas on Behalf of a Brand Increases Feelings of Connection (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01461672251338686) (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin)

• Creative Ideation Activates Disinhibited Reward-Seeking and Indulgent Choices (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39207437/) (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology)

Learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at www.haas.org/culture-kit (http://www.haas.org/culture-kit) .

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.