Does experience stimulate or stifle creativity?

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore if experience stimulates or stifles creativity. It shows that accumulation of work experience improves an individual’s judgment and reduces divergent thinking of creativity. Design/methodology/approach - This study examines the factors influencing individual creativity, including the impact of work experience, using 509 responses to questionnaires from 500 top construction companies. The research hypothesis is evaluated using structural equation modeling. Findings - The main factors affecting individual creativity are a positive mind-set, self-directed learning, and low self-monitoring. Self-directed learning has the greatest influence on the creativity of individuals with accumulated work experience, while low self-monitoring influences the creativity of people with less work experience. Research limitations/implications - A better way to study individual creativity is longitudinal research, which involves long-time observation of the life cycle of creativity among organizational members, who are like products with a life cycle. Further study is necessary to show why some members are creative only for a short time (short life cycle) while some are creative for a longer (very long life cycle) period. Originality/value - This study finds that employee creativity derives from the self-directed learning process as it helps to accumulate experience. This result indicates that construction firms can train employees to improve their self-directed learning and boost creativity. Experienced workers need more attention because they are trapped in their previous experience and it is difficult to train them.