Scheduled: Marion JOUBERT

Jury

Abstract

How can original and useful ideas be generated? This question lies at the heart of innovation. Within organizations, managers are searching for the right approach to spark ideas. Brainstorming and Design Thinking sessions are well-established paths. However, other approaches are attracting increasing interest, particularly gamification. Gamification is the use of game mechanics (challenges, roles, storytelling, rewards, cooperation, etc.) in activities that are not inherently playful. The literature highlights an overall positive effect of gamification on creativity and creative performance. However, the results remain heterogeneous, and the underlying mechanisms are still not fully understood. Therefore, a question arises: why do some gamified approaches foster creativity, while others produce only limited benefits, or even the opposite effect? ​​This thesis provides some answers by seeking to understand how game elements are experienced by participants and what their creative repercussions are. She thus introduces the concept of a gamified creative experience, which refers to the set of affective, cognitive, and social perceptions positively linked to creative performance and generated by a gamified creativity session. This proposition is developed through three complementary studies. The first consists of a systematic literature review to identify the main game elements and the effects by which they can foster different facets of creativity. The second is based on a quantitative study conducted during gamified and non-gamified creativity workshops. Its objective is to understand how gamification transforms the experience lived by participants and, consequently, their creative performance. The third study focuses on a specific game element, the game objective, comparing two objective formulations to analyze their effects on creativity. The results show that gamification can indeed foster creativity, but that its positive effects are not automatic. Game elements do not directly influence idea generation; rather, they primarily affect cognitive and socio-affective mechanisms such as feelings of psychological safety, attention, the sense of challenge, and social cohesion. These mechanisms can reinforce each other, but they can also create tension. For example, a challenge can stimulate social cohesion while simultaneously reducing the freedom to express creative ideas due to fear of judgment. This thesis thus demonstrates that simply adding game elements is not enough to make a creativity session more effective. The work of a gamified creativity session designer relies on a delicate balance between several dimensions: offering a stimulating challenge without compromising psychological safety, providing a structured framework without restricting freedom of exploration, fostering immersion in the game while maintaining focus on the problem to be solved, and designing a system credible enough to engage participants while preserving its playful aspect. By highlighting these issues, this thesis provides guidelines for the design and facilitation of gamified creativity workshops. This research argues that games are not limited to stimulating motivation. When carefully designed, they become true architects of the creative experience, capable of shaping the conditions in which ideas emerge, develop, and transform.