online support
First hand experience with thousands of people who have been administered the Basadur Profile or as it is also known the Creative Problem Solving Profile (CPSP) during creativity
training and application sessions indicate the instrument has excellent reliability and face validity.
People who take the Profile on more than one occasion usually report stable scores over time. If scores have shifted over time
(remember, the Profile measures "states", not "traits"), further investigation almost always uncovers factors which explain the
shifts, such as job changes requiring correspondingly different thinking and problem solving modes.
Since the Basadur Profile or CPSP was first introduced (Basadur, Graen & Wakabayashi, 1990), an ongoing program of item replacement to improve its psychometric properties has been under way. The procedures used to identify the more and less robust items in the inventory are fully described in Basadur (1991; 1998a; 1998b; 2000). In addition to the original version (termed CPSP1), four progressively improved versions of the CPSP (termed CPSP 2, 8, 9 and 11) have been developed. The psychometric properties of each version are described and evaluated in the following section.
Extensive research confirming the validity of the Basadur Profile or CPSP has been reported, and is summarized briefly here. First,
individuals' assessments of their own dominant CPSP style by themselves and in conjunction with an expert, agree with the assessments made by the profile itself (Basadur, 1998a), demonstrating face-validity.
Secondly, CPSP scores show convergent validity with both the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI) (Basadur,
Takai, & Wakabayashi, 1990; Basadur, 1991; 1998a) and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) (Basadur, 1991; 1998a; 2000).
This paper presents a theory of organizational creativity as a process. It presents a psychological instrument that measures the constructs and stages of the process, called the Creative Problem Solving Profile (CPSP) inventory. The CPSP is a practical approach and tool for understanding applied creativity as a process and for diagnosing and solving real-world problems. The theory consists of four stages: generating, conceptualizing, optimizing and implementing. It differs from other multi-stage creativity theories in that each stage of the CPSP is based on, explained and measured using established cognitive constructs from models of intelligence and educational psychology, including Guilford's (1967) Structure of Intellect (SOI) and Sternberg's (1996) Triarchic Intelligence. These constructs differentiate the mental activities from one stage of the CPSP to the next. This paper demonstrates the validity of the approach through a variety of real-world applications and discusses implications for managers and organizations. This paper suggests future research directions, especially for the assessment and dynamics of creativity within organizational (intra-organization), between organizations (inter-organizational), and at the super-organizational (societal) ecosystem level.
Effective teamwork is becoming increasingly important to organizational success. Advances in network and communication technology have allowed companies to widen their potential team member base. However we still need to better understand how to structure top-performing teams. This paper proposes forming teams based on their cognitive style, rather than personality, within a process framework. An experiment was conducted to investigate the innovative performance of problem solving groups with three different blends of cognitive styles. As predicted, groups with a heterogeneous blend of styles outperformed groups with completely or partially homogeneous blends. On the other hand, team members' satisfaction scores were lower for heterogeneous teams than either the completely or partially homogenous teams. There was preliminary evidence that among groups with heterogeneous blends, those with smaller style dispersions might be expected to outperform those with larger style dispersions. There was also room for some speculation that a curvilinear relationship might exist for team members' satisfaction as a function of diversity in team member cognitive style. Implications of these findings are discussed.
In this article, an instrument to describe one's own unique style of creative problem solving is introduced. It identifies the portions of a "complete process of creative problem solving" for which one has a relatively greater or lesser inclination. Theoretical foundations built upon the basic Osborn-Parnes CPS model are presented. The instrument is still in the development stage, but encouraging preliminary reliability and validity test results are reported. Additional research underway is described. Applications at the individual, group and organizational levels and future opportunities for research are suggested.
