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today we're speaking with Wharton management professor Samir nur Mohammed and the topic is overcoming negative
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reactions to radical creativity we're to talk about eating insects along the way
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as well so thanks for joining us Samir thank you so much for having me so the title of the paper is hearing crickets
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an inductive study of overcoming negative reactions to radical creativity so he can give us a quick overview of
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what the research was about yeah so this is actually some cool new research that
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I've been doing with my colleague Spencer Harrison who's at Boston College
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is an expert on creativity as well and what we were really interested in was the idea that you know when creative
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products are introduced and creative ideas are are introduced how do people gain traction for them so if we think
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about some ideas some are extremely novel and extremely different from prevailing habits in society and we
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don't have much of an understanding of how these ideas gain traction and why
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some do versus others don't so what we thought would be interesting was to look
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at this and an emerging market such as the edible insects industry here in the United States and other Western
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countries and seeing this industry called entomophagy and seeing what companies and entrepreneurs are using to
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basically gain traction for these new products and new types of food that they have often when you think about the
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ideas of in a ting insects you probably think look disgusting well we are interested in well how are these
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companies entrepreneurs actually trying to get consumers and customers to try their products because they do offer a
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number of health benefits but of course they provoke this reaction to discuss so
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what we tried to do was look at these companies and see what types of tactics they're using not to just come up with
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their ideas but also to sell these ideas to the public and what we've come up
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with our number of tactics that companies and entrepreneurs are using to kind of what we call tuned down the
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novelty of their ideas so often when we think about creative products and creativity we think you need to be as
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out there in the world as possible to really wildly depart from existing norms but what we actually find is that you
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actually want to tone down or tune back your radical ideas you want to make them
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less novel and what these entrepreneurs are doing are some of these strategies to sell these issues and these ideas to
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customers so what they'll do is they'll actually come up with vocabulary
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so that these new products sound much more familiar to us similarly they'll put them in form so that they look just
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like a chocolate bar or a cookie but they're actually contained in sex so we
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come up with a wide variety tactics that entrepreneurs are using to convince consumers to try their products and so
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what were some of the key takeaways of the study yeah so this this big idea of kind of tuning back and tuning down the
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novelty of your ideas was was a big one so there's been some prior research looking at for instance Thomas Edison
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and what they found in that research with Thomas Edison is that he had better designs for disseminating electricity
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but what he actually did was use existing designs an existing infrastructure to his advantage so
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similarly here what we found is people are you know for instance they're scaling back their ideas by putting them
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in these familiar forms or using vocabulary that's familiar to us so instead of calling them you know
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crickets or wax worms they'll say that this tastes like you know this type of
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pistachio or this tastes like desert shrimp kind of these things that are somewhat familiar to us but also are
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kind of provoking a sense of curiosity to get people to try these products and I think this is really important for
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businesses because a lot of investment is spent on coming up with the design itself for coming up with the product
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itself rather than trying to think about okay well how can we how can we get the
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mainstream public how can we get our customers to really buy into these ideas that seem quite novel on the surface all
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right did any of these strategies really surprise you yeah I think there were there were a couple that really were
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waraa ha strategies for me so if I if I think about one of them was kind of managing the surplus of ideas that you
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have that's what we call it in the paper so if you think about you know the people working for you your employees
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often times you have to say well you know what Joe that idea is just way too out there right now and we assume that
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company shell those ideas what we found in this context was is that actually they're not shelving the ideas they're
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actually using those ideas for the future they're actually trying to work towards some of those ideas that are too
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extreme right now and then saying okay you know what we're going to put this idea on the back burner for now
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but they're using it as a way to get employees to be motivated for the future
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so instead of just putting it on the back burner they're saying okay well if
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we imagine a future maybe five years from now where that product will be important in an everyday thing can what
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would what do we need to do today to get there right and so if you had to advise
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a company that was introducing a really sort of novel product based on your research what kinds of practical advice
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would you give them yeah I think one of the big things for us was looking at you
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know when we think about creativity to assume that a lot of its being done inside the organization what was really
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took us by surprise was just how much companies are really using the public to to navigate whether this is an
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interesting idea or not or whether it'll be an idea that gains traction but not
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just that what's happening is some of their customers some of these clients that are outside of their organizations
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are actually the ones that are promoting it and using it in really interesting ways so for instance you know one one
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thing that we came across in our interviews is how they're using this this flower this cricket flour as a way
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of making waffles or pancakes and that was something that you know maybe the company's thought would happen at some
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point in time but it's really being left up to the customer to kind of come up
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with recipes and sharing those ideas online and then using that to kind of promote your product is really helpful
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similarly we found that entrepreneurs are really using the media to see what's
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going to gain traction versus not so they might think that you know an idea is too extreme right now but they'll
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kind of still pitch it to the media and the media will cover it and then kind of
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based on customer reactions to it they'll decide whether they want to produce or not what kinds of
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misperceptions do you think your research dispels yeah so I think one of the big mercy receptions of this of some
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of this research is that and Paul Rosen here at Penn has done some interesting work on this but it's this idea that of
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course when we see something discuss disgusting we're very much revolted by it I think that's still very much
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generally the case when I say we do you want to try you know this set of crickets here in my hand you'd probably
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see no that sounds really really gross but one of the things that we saw is that you know entrepreneurs are
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use some of these negative emotions and trying to harness them into more positive emotions or cognitions so this
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idea of okay well I have this set of insects or the set of crickets in my hand but they actually look like cookies
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or they actually look like chips which are very familiar to us it almost provokes this sense of surprise or
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curiosity so what we're seeing is entrepreneurs are playing a much more active role in shaping reactions to how
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people respond to their ideas and they're doing that through the designs that they're using for putting their
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products in they're also doing it in terms of how they're pitching in they're
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also using you know the people around the customer or the people around the audience to really gain traction so for
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instance you know we observed with these with these entrepreneurs they you know if they asked a parent to try you know
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one of these edible insects the parents would be really no uninterested in doing
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it but of course their kids would be super interested and by seeing their kids do that that would take their
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parents back to time in what you know eating dirt was actually okay so again it's kind of channeling these negative
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emotions into something that's more like surprise or something that's into
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curiosity and saying okay well you know if I let my son or daughter can do it I can kind of try it too right right how
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does your research for to stand apart from other research in this field yeah I think one of the big the big things for
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us is was really trying to find a context where you know radical creativity is taking shape I think one
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of the things that we see in existing research is that we either look at creativity in the lab or we look at more
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incremental innovation we don't see many you know ideas in our in our lifetimes
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actually that really changed the course of things for people so if you think about the edible insects industry that's
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really trying to not just change you know food itself but it's trying to change eating habits around the world
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and that's something that's you know it's seen as something that's very
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off-putting to people but these entrepreneurs are trying to change it so what we were trying to do in this
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research was really go to context where we'd see the phenomenon in action and
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whereas you know some of the prior work on radical creativity or radical innovation has really looked at things
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in hindsight and evaluating the practices we're actually seeing these entrepreneurs as they happen and as they
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as new businesses emerge so even over the course of our study we had to keep trying to update our
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lists of people in an interview because there are so many new companies and we got see companies that were not only
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well established and having you know great sales records but we also saw companies that were just starting to get
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kick-started donations and that we're really in that idea generation phase that really opened up all lines of the
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supply chain but also the creative process to us which is really really interesting and cool as a researcher now
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now think it won't be too long before the Girl Scouts introduced their new cricket cookies that's right um but what
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is it that you want to look at next yeah so I think for me you know a big a big curiosity of mine in terms of research
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is looking at you know when individuals or organizations are constrained in some
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way so whether that's in terms of resources or talent or you know in this situation they're constrained in terms
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of what they're trying to do in terms of their products they have a limited set
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of resources and they're trying to make things better for the world so that's
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something that generally interests me so I want to kind of keep pursuing this research related to creativity but also
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kind of take it back to you know our employees and and that you know the positions that our students will take
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here at warden and thinking about okay well how can we apply some of these insights to them how can they gain
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traction for their ideas when they're facing adversity great well thanks very
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much for joining us Samira thanks for having me you