You are crazy! A classroom experiment to enhance creativity among management students

Abstract

Purpose

The paper aims to focus on fostering a strategic attitude and creativity‐related competences among management students, through alternative teaching‐learning methods, whereby students propose “crazy” ideas that can be applicable to (business) organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

The approach taken was an active learning classroom experiment. In total, 22 participants volunteered among the authors' own students, enrolled at different management‐related degrees at the University of Valencia (Spain).

Findings

Five student teams proposed very interesting and original ideas (some “crazier” than others, many highly relevant and feasible), aimed at tackling relevant challenges at the workplace or at the university.

Research limitations/implications

Further research may be inspired by this experiment, expanding the scope of the inquiry to other student profiles and/or to actual initiatives involving organizational development and learning dynamics.

Practical implications

All proposals implied that employees/students who have fun will be more committed to their job/studies, involving “win‐win” outcomes. Moreover, the university‐related proposals can be easily adapted to a workplace context. On the other hand, the experiment itself can be also adapted as part of organizational development and learning policies – with employees taking the role here assigned to students.

Social implications

These “crazy” ideas are invaluable in societies needing radical social‐economic change (e.g. Spain) towards new, knowledge‐based models.

Originality/value

Beyond the most immediate benefits for them, private and public organizations can crucially contribute to knowledge‐driven social‐economic change by embracing these “crazy” ideas in their development and learning policies.

Citation

Oltra, V. and Escribá‐Esteve, A. (2012), "You are crazy! A classroom experiment to enhance creativity among management students", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 26 No. 6, pp. 20-22. https://doi.org/10.1108/14777281211272288