Rice Business study finds that a daily routine can foster creativity in the workplace

Houston Voices

Having a routine can help foster creativity, a Rice University study found. Getty Images

Think of a routine: your morning workout, walking the dog, making your bed. It's hard to imagine these as creative pursuits. After all, Leonardo da Vinci may have made his bed every morning, but it's probably not what inspired him to paint the Mona Lisa.

So it's no surprise that workplace analysts have long considered routines to be the antithesis of creativity. But it turns out that the relationship between the two is more complementary than previously believed. Scott Sonenshein, a management professor at Rice Business, studied just how this relationship works. What Sonenshein wanted to know was, how can an organization achieve creative outcomes through routine?

For the answer, think of da Vinci again. Certain repetitive aspects of style make his work recognizably his. It's how we can instantly see that The Last Supper, St. John the Baptist and the Mona Lisa are all the work of his hand. In that sense, they are both repeated patterns and feats of genius.

For Sonenshein, some retailers are, in a sense, the da Vincis of suburban America. Sonenshein examined data from a fast-growing retailer that operates a chain of roughly 400 clothing, jewelry, accessory and gift stores across the U.S., and was fascinated to see how it could surprise its customers each season while maintaining a brand image that makes the retailer easily identifiable. Sonenshein realized that the retailer was effectively routinizing creativity.

When he interviewed corporate managers and store employees at the retailer he calls "BoutiqueCo," a pattern emerged. Sonenshein discovered something he calls "familiar novelty" in the way the retailer designs its stores. While most stores use a rigid floor plan for the display of merchandise, BoutiqueCo instead adopts a set of flexible guidelines.

These rules of the road are explicit enough to ensure that each store is readily identifiable as a BoutiqueCo outlet. But because the display rules afford a great deal of flexibility, they allow space for creative employees to come up with their own ideas. If merchandising were a musical score, Sonenshein observed a dynamic that is less like marching band music and more like jazz. Employees are encouraged to riff off of the main themes of the chain to regularly create something unexpected.

Of course, creating novel effects doesn't come naturally to everyone. It takes a certain kind of individual to achieve it, especially in the highly visual area of merchandising. Store managers told Sonenshein that they actively look for employees who are willing to take visual risks and engage creatively while still keeping to the rules of the company road.

Finally, creativity is routinized in the stores' feedback systems. This takes place both among employees, who frequently discuss and even debate their work with each other, and in the more formal setting of managerial feedback. Managers actively encourage creativity, urging employees to put their personalities into the work of the store, to the point where brand identity and individual identity intermingle.

So what does the experience of one outlet tell us about the relationship between creativity and routines? Sonenshein suggests that there is a strong role for personalization of routine tasks in the creative workplace. When employees bring their own preferences to routine performances, it can elevate them from mundane to novel.

Of course, it's unlikely that a window dresser will create the next Mona Lisa while promoting the spring line. Genius like da Vinci's may only come along once in a millennium. But if we put a little soul into our work under the guidance of managers who allow us to riff off of the corporate sheet music, remarkable things become possible.

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This article originally appeared on Rice Business Wisdom.

Scott Sonenshein is the Henry Gardiner Symonds Professor of Management at Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University.

Allison Williams, who has been working with the Transformational Prison Project for two years, attended Good Measure to consult on the brand development. Alan Nguyen/Good Measure

Houston creatives relaunch nonprofit's brand through a 3-day collaboration

For good measure

What if you could harness the power of a city's top creative professionals to create a brand identity for a nonprofit that otherwise couldn't afford it? Alex Anderson posed that question to some of his colleagues, and Good Measure was born.

"Good Measure exists to broaden the conversation about good in the world and what that means and how people can contribute to good no matter their skill set," says Anderson, who is a senior brand strategist and account manager at Houston-based NUU Group.

Good Measure is a Houston-based nonprofit that hosts three-day creative collaborations with local designers, writers, brand strategists, and more. The goal is simple: Equip a nonprofit with new storytelling tools — like a website, social media, and video communicating the organization's message.

This weekend was the second event Anderson organized with his co-founder, Tres Garner. The nonprofit partner was the Transformational Prison Project, which uses restorative justice in Massachusetts prisons to help incarcerated individuals mindfully use their time in prison to create healing. It's about bringing everyone involved in the criminal justice system to the table to thoughtfully effect change and reinstate humanity in these prisons.

"The Transformational Prison Project understands that no matter what your position is within the criminal justice system that everybody is vulnerable to trauma. So, it's in everyone's vested interest to create more of a system that's reparative and healing than punitive." says Karen Lischinsky, director of TPP, in the teaser video created at Good Measure.

Lischinsky was a vital part of the weekend, as was actress Allison Williams (Girls and Get Out), who has been an advocate for TPP and has led restorative justice sessions in Massachusetts prisons for two years.

"I wish to transform the way that prisons, as we imagine them today, operate and the effects that they have on people," Williams says in the video.

Transformational Prison Project from Transform Prison Project on Vimeo.

Using their powers for good
Good Measure brought together 40 creatives — designers, developers, strategists, videographers, photographers, writers, stylists, and more — into NUU Group's East Downtown office to develop new branding, web design, and videography for TPP. Filming took place down the street at Primer Grey. Anderson says the point is to break down barriers and bring together individuals who would otherwise not get to work together.

"It's some feedback that we've heard over and over again how refreshing and inspiring it is to work with people across the city," Anderson says. "So, you get to come together and learn each other's processes and have a case study or portfolio piece with someone who's work you admire."

Good Measure volunteers work alongside the nonprofit partners, so Lischinsky and Williams were there every step of the way. It was a learning process for both sides of the equation — the volunteers making sure they understand and express the TPP's mission as well as TPP learning the importance of the brand development process. Anderson says Lischinsky's presence was key to the success of the weekend — as was Williams' who wasn't just a celebrity endorsement. Anderson says he could see her full heart was committed to the program.

"You pull in a celebrity figure, and there's a tactical play. It's advertising," he says. "But what was different about this event is that Allison is not a face. She showed up from the first day of Good Measure to participate and contribute as someone who is on the board of TPP and an advocate for the program."

Creating a movement
Good Measure is planning to double down on its efforts for a New York weekend early next year to serve two nonprofits with 100 creatives volunteering. The organization also expects to return to do another Houston weekend in 2019 as well as a collaboration in Los Angeles.

Anderson says they also plan on hosting a one-day conference in Houston to discuss social good. Williams and Lischinsky are both onboard to attend.

Doing the homework

Alan Nguyen/Good Measure

Actress Allison Williams and TPP Director Karen Lischinsky kicked off the three-day rebranding collaboration with a discussion focused on the organization's goals, challenges, and messaging.

Researchers found that there's still very little conceptual explanation for how individual creative attempts become organizational innovation. Getty Images

Researchers find there's not much data on how creativity becomes change in the workplace

Houston Voices

Innovation and creativity are crucial tools that all businesses need in order to prosper. Research into how these tools work covers a broad area and crosses various disciplines. In the past, much of this research has been divided: One side looked at innovation, which focuses on how ideas are implemented, while the other examined creativity, which focuses on coming up with new ideas. Rice Business Professor Jing Zhou and colleagues addressed this divide by reviewing research going back a little more than a decade, looking for key measures that could be used as guidelines for future research.

Zhou and her colleagues began their work by reviewing the practical and theoretical perspectives of innovation and creativity in the workplace. They then created a framework for future research after identifying prominent theories.

Before getting started, however, they needed clear definitions for both innovation and creativity. Creativity, Zhou proposed, centers on idea generation. It's the first step toward innovation. Innovation, she concluded, stresses the implementation of ideas. This happens at different levels: individual, team, organization, or across multiple levels.

At the team level of innovation, research has progressed significantly, the authors found. They suggest that researchers now focus on other aspects of team-level research, such as team environment, leadership and facilitators of workgroups.

At the organizational level, Zhou and her colleagues found that numerous studies looked at the factors that influence innovation. But, they concluded, there's still very little conceptual explanation for how individual creative attempts become organizational innovation.

The team's review reveals the enormous strides that researchers have made in the field of creativity and innovation in recent years, and clarifies how their studies have been used by different organizations.

Despite advances in the field, however, there are still shortcomings. Many studies, for example, are hampered by problematic research approaches. Some lack theoretical groundwork and few take an inclusive approach to multi-level studies.

Zhou and her colleagues argue that addressing these limitations would be a tremendous leap forward in understanding creativity and innovation in the workplace. Without innovation, companies can't prosper and progress. The same holds true for academic research into these lifelines of business success: It will need to expand and dig deeper or cease to be relevant in practice.

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This article originally appeared on Rice Business Wisdom.

Jing Zhou is the Houston Endowment Professor of Management and Director for Asian Management Research and Education at Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University.

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Houston Methodist awarded $4M grant to recruit head of Neal Cancer Center

new hire

Armed with a $4 million state grant, the Houston Methodist Academic Institute has recruited a renowned expert in ovarian and endometrial cancer research to lead the Dr. Mary and Ron Neal Cancer Center.

The grant, provided by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, enabled the institute to lure Dr. Daniela Matei away from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. There, she is the Diana Princess of Wales Professor in Cancer Research and chief of the Division of Reproductive Science in Medicine.

Matei will succeed Dr. Jenny Chang, who was hired last year to run the Houston Methodist Academic Institute.

At the Neal Cancer Center, located in the Texas Medical Center complex, oncologists work on innovations in cancer research, treatment, and technology. The center opened in 2021 after the Neals donated $25 million to expand Houston Methodist’s cancer research capabilities. It handles about 7,000 new cases each year involving more than two dozen types of cancer.

U.S. News & World Report puts Houston Methodist Hospital at No. 19 among the country’s best hospitals for cancer care, two spots below Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston sits at No. 1 on the list.

Matei’s research related to ovarian and endometrial cancer holds the potential to benefit tens of thousands of American women. The American Cancer Society estimates:

  • 21,010 women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and 12,450 women will die from it.
  • 68,270 women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with endometrial cancer, and 14,450 women will die from it.

Matei is leaving Northwestern in the wake of widespread cuts in federal funding for medical research. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has canceled or frozen tens of millions of dollars in grants for Northwestern, the Wall Street Journal reports, and the university has been plugging the gaps with its own money.

“The university is totally keeping us on life support,” Matei told the newspaper last year. “The big question is for how long they can do this.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, Matei’s $5 million NIH grant supporting 69 cancer trials has been caught up in the federal funding chaos, so Northwestern stepped in to cover trial expenses such as nurses’ salaries and diagnostic procedures.

Trial participants include some patients with rare, incurable tumors who are undergoing experimental treatments aligned with the genetics of their condition, the newspaper says.

“It’s certainly a life-and-death situation for cancer patients on these trials,” Matei said in 2025.

Matei is among the beneficiaries of more than $15 million in grants approved February 18 by CPRIT’s board. The grants went toward recruiting five cancer researchers to institutions in Texas.

One of those grants, totaling $1.5 million, went to the University of Houston to recruit Akash Gupta, a research scientist at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. The remaining grants went to recruit scientists to The University of Texas at Dallas and The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Rice University lands $14M state grant to open Center for Space Technologies

on a mission

Rice University’s Space Institute soon will be home to the newly created Center for Space Technologies.

On Feb. 17, the Texas Space Commission approved a nearly $14.2 million grant for the Rice project. The Center for Space Technologies will target:

  • Research and development
  • Technology transfer and innovation
  • Statewide partnerships
  • Workforce development training
  • Space-focused education programs

The goal of the new center “is to fulfill an articulated need for research, workforce development, and industry collaboration,” said Kemah communications and marketing executive Gwen Griffin, chair of the commission.

State Rep. Greg Bonnen, a Friendswood Republican, authored the bill that set up the Texas Space Commission.

Since being authorized in 2023, the commission has funded 24 projects, with Rice and Houston-area companies accounting for nearly $75 million in grants to back space-related initiatives.

The grant to Rice brings the TSC's total investment to $150 million, fully committing the entire state appropriation from the Texas Legislature in 2023.

Other local companies that have received grants over the years include Aegis Aerospace, Axiom Space, Intuitive Machines, Starlab Space and Venus Aerospace.

The commission also awarded $7 million to Blue Origin earlier this month. See a list of the 24 awards here.

Waymo self-driving robotaxis have officially launched in Houston

Waymo has arrived

Waymo will begin dispatching its robotaxis in four more cities in Texas and Florida, expanding the territory covered by its fleet of self-driving cars to 10 major U.S. metropolitan markets.

The move into Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando, Florida, announced Tuesday, February 24, widens Waymo's early lead in autonomous driving while rival services from Tesla and the Amazon-owned Zoox are still testing their vehicles in only a few U.S. cities.

In contrast, Waymo's robotaxis already provide more than 400,000 weekly trips in the six metropolitan areas where they have been transporting passengers: Phoenix, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta, and Austin, Texas.

Waymo operates its ride-hailing service through its own app in all the U.S. cities except Atlanta and Austin, where its robotaxis can only be summoned through Uber's ride-hailing service.

The expansion into four more markets marks a significant step toward Waymo's goal to surpass 1 million weekly paid trips by the end of 2026. Without identifying where its robotaxis will be available next, Waymo is targeting a list of eight other cities that include Las Vegas, Washington, Detroit and Boston while signaling its first overseas availability is likely to be London.

To help pay for more robotaxis, Waymo recently raised $16 billion as part of the financial infusion that puts the value of the company at $126 billion. The valuation fueled speculation that Waymo may eventually be spun off from its corporate parent Alphabet, where it began as a secret project within Google in 2009.

Although Waymo is opening up in four more cities, its robotaxis initially will only be made available to a limited number of people with its ride-hailing app in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando before the service will be available to all comers in those markets.

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