In Search of Innovative Ideas: Does Novelty Add Value?

The paper examines interrelationships between key dimensions of creativity evaluation, novelty and usefulness, and how assessment of both contributes to the overall judgement of ideas. Two studies conducted in the US, China, and India indicated that novelty and usefulness dimensions are interdepended and are integrated into overall judgement of an idea in a trade-off manner. This pattern of findings provides evidence against broadly assumed independent or positively related nature of the relationship between novelty and usefulness and highlights complexity associated with the formation of overall value assessment