Difference Between Divergent And Convergent Thinking Assessment Answer

Answer :

Title: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Tourism and Hospitality

Executive summary

This assignment described the concept of the divergent and convergent thinking, and the difference between these two has also been analysed. The convergent thinking basically refers to answering the question or solving the problem without applying the creativity whereas divergent concept revealed the importance of creativity in exploring any answer. The divergent thinkers highlighted the significant reduction in the caudal region in the cortex of the brain. Also, the application of these two concepts in relation to the hospitality industry has also been described in this paper with coherent summarisation of the diagram.
Introduction

The tourism and hospitality industry is going through some radical changes with time. The integration of technology and innovation in the entrepreneurship of the industry has also to be changed with it. The realisation of the various strategies to stay ahead of the curve also requires critical innovation and entrepreneurship for its application to improve the standard if operation.

Difference between divergent and convergent

Convergent thinking basically means the ability to provide sufficient and correct answers to the intended question without any creativity for answering. Divergent thinking, however, is the method used for applying creativity to find an idea by exploring various probable solutions of the intended question. The primary difference between the two is in its approach (Alegre et al., 2016). The convergent thinking means to follow a predefined set of steps to reach logical conclusions for the answer. Whereas divergent thinking is more spontaneous and non-linear, this requires brainstorming to reach one of the many feasible solutions. These differences can be categorised as follows:

Personality: There is a significant difference in the personality of the convergent and divergent thinkers. The divergent thinkers are more open and extrovert who expresses their opinion and view very extroverted. This helped the people in creative thinking feeding their curiosity, interests and their imagination (Alegre et al., 2016). The convergent thinkers were, however, no significant personality traits associated with it had. The convergent way of thinking develops in an individual through the learning and knowledge gaining over the years which induces aninformation bank to answer from. The convergent thinkers, however, relied on a set of steps which are already determined to arrive at a conclusive answer without thinking of other possibilities but relying simply on the answer of those steps.

Brain Activity: The brain activity of the divergent and convergent thinkers also has significant differences between them. Different studies have shown that the convergent thinkers had more coherence and used the right side of the more often to answer the questions. The divergent thinkers, however, showed a significant decrease in the caudal region in the cortex of the brain. The EEG studies have shown this (Researchgate, 2019). There is also a larger synchronisation of the two hemispheres of the brain among the divergent thinkers than the convergent thinkers. Divergent thinking has also induced significant positive emotions in the individual during the thinking process due to the complexity of the problems.

Intellectual Ability: When the individuals were tested on the divergent and convergent thinking abilities using the various standard test available, the divergent group of people has more word stock, fluency and reading score than the convergent group of people. The anxiety and penetration score of the divergent group of individuals were also more (Alegre et al., 2016). The divergent group of people's thinking process became more mature and controlled in an unconventional way to produce an excellent contemplation of the topic based on personal perception which is entirely inexperienced in it. This lead to a better understanding of the topic and its applicability than the convergent group of peoples.

Creative ability: The divergent thinkers have an innate ability of innovative ideas and solutions to the problems than the convergent thinkers as they are more dependent on the set of questions and their answers to get to the next level. Any wrong answers could dispose of the process useless. The divergent group, however, has an acute knowledge and understanding of the volatility and contextual meaning of the topic which helped them in applying the theories in multiple ways to solve a problem. So, the divergent and convergent individuals though do not have any significant difference in the intelligence but just varies on the applicability of the concepts which led to the difference of approach between the two groups of thinkers.

Two Examples from the Hospitality industry

The convergent and divergent thinking has been used in solving various problems of the hospitality industry. Since the hospitality industry deals with customers at a personal level, they need to be ever present and assist and deliver the needs and demands of the customers even if sometimes they have to go out of the way to fulfil those wishes and frivolous requests. Thus, the professionals of the hospitality industry need to make their uses constantly. Two examples are: 

Customer Relations: The hotels now days go out of their conventional ways to accommodate various requests of the customers in addition to the standard services provided by the hotels. This requires the use of convergent thinking abilities of the professionals. This project is because the professional cannot accept any and all request made by the customers. They have to accept and deliver the services according to the rules and regulations laid down by the company (Alegre et al., 2016). We can entertain certain variations in the requests but has to operate within the ambit of the company rules. Thus, they have to follow a procedure which has been set by the company beforehand to accept such demands. Other than that the complaints of the customers have also to be tackled immediately on the spot for customer satisfaction and resolve the issues then and there. This requires a certain degree of skill in convergent thinking to reach a conclusion which is beneficial for both the customer and the hotels. They have to assess what can be done in response to the situation which has arisen to complacently find an efficient solution (Elche et al., 2017). The functions of the hotels like cleaners, food services, quality management must also follow convergent thinking guidelines to ascertain a maintained standard of operation

Management Decisions: The divergent thinking must be undertaken by the management level professionals to adapt to the changes in the industry effectively. They must find new scopes and opportunities for the hotels to expand and increase profitability while constantly maintaining a degree of attachment to the existing industry standard. This is essential because the hotel has to provide something extra which will attract a used number of customers to their specific hotel rather than any other. The decisions taken by the management must also include the various inputs provided by the wings of the company to make a single conclusion for enforcing. The management also needs to consider the various aspects of operation like demographics, market demands, social variance, beliefs etc. while formulating various strategies of the company. This requires critical divergent thinking as the problems faced by them are not the same or similar so that a single effective approach or solution can be afforded (Alegre et al., 2016). They must shape themselves according to the need of the hotel to benefit and survive in a competitive environment. Divergent thinking capabilities are also put to use when adopting new technologies before anyone else in the market. The divergent thinking helps in critically analysing the applicability of the said improvements and hinges the support of it for its success

Summary of the diagram

Figure: Process model

Source: (Millington, 2012)

Creativity: The hospitality industry needs to regularly update itself on the changes in the market tendencies to stay at their game and ahead of the curve. This often requires creativity in accommodating the demands and needs of the customers. The technological advancements of the world have been grabbed by the hospitality industry with innovative and creative thinking. Creativity is necessary to produce new ideas to improve the services of the hospitality industry. The professionals of the industry must identify the opportunities existing in the market and apply a creative mind to find solutions to those problems and provide a viable product as an end result which is ready for application (Millington, 2012). As the hospitality industry involves customer interaction, the dynamics of the interaction cannot be easily predicted and hence cannot be taught to the professionals. 

Thus creativity and presence of mind of the professionals come to the rescue. The identification of the various existing opportunities in the market comes with creativity which helps them to find out the changing needs and demands of the customers. The ideas for necessary improvements are put forward by creative thinkers who say what needs to be changed for the industry to improve and better itself. For example, the platform to compare the prices of various hotels has been instrumental in integrating the use of technological advancements in the industry. The customers can now easily compare the prices which have led to immense customer satisfaction and stability in the hospitality industry (Millington, 2012). With the invention of Wi-Fi, the need for the general public to be constantly connected with each other has grown manifold. The hospitality industry has grabbed this opportunity to offer free Wi-Fi services in the hotels to attract more customers and provide a seamless experience while being connected to the rest of the world freely

Innovation: The identification of the available opportunities in the market all the hospitality industry does not necessarily provide a viable product to be offered to the customers. Thus, the need for innovation comes to the front to conceptualise and prototype making for testing and final implementation if successful. The conceived ideas are moulded according to the needs and demands of the customers, and innovative ideas are used to produce a product which can be used by the industry with necessary modification (Millington, 2012). This realisation of the idea in the creative stage is done by the innovation. Often creative ideas do not have fruitful results and do not provide a valid base to grow an impactful service. The innovation basically finds out what needs to be done to implement the ideas of the creative heads of the industry by using practical application. For example, innovation has affected the industry with the integration of the SaaS or Software as a Service. This innovation helps the industry by storing information regarding booking and specific requirements of them along with it if any (Stayntouch, 2019). The human element poses risks of forgetting, mismanaging the needs of the customers. The SaaS software registers all the specific demands and needs of the customers and takes care of the guests with absolute precision. There is little or no room for error in such software services which makes the experience more wonderful. The use of workflow management tool in the hospitality industry has also enabled the hotels to manage their employees better and coordinate with the other departments of the hotel (Stayntouch, 2019). This tool helps in better management of the interdisciplinary actions of the different services of the hotel. With the use of this innovation, the instances of dropped guests have also reduced significantly which is added to the profitability for the hotel

Entrepreneurship: The integrated technologies or any other changes in the hospitality industry have to be implemented by the management of the industry. The entrepreneurship of the management comes in handy for this process. It is the responsibility of the entrepreneurs of the industry to implement any new technologies by taking advantages of the opportunities existing in the market and also find suitable uses for the innovative technologies that have been developed by the industry (Stayntouch, 2019). They are responsible for making strategic decisions for the hotels and the service industry. As such, these decisions must make use of the available improvements in the services offered by it. The entrepreneurs make necessary plans required to implement them into the industry. The value of the integrated service and innovation is also greatly enhanced and influenced by the strategies undertaken by the entrepreneurs. The primary job of the entrepreneurs is to find a possible way to implement innovation and make it work for the industry and increase profitability (Zopiatis et al. 2018). For example, William Becker and Paul Green have taken advantage of the lack of quality services at an affordable price to implement strategic decisions to take their hotel business in to a different level. They understood the need for a quality bedding which they provided at a constant price of $6 no matter the location in their hotel chain. This strategic decision taken by them has increased the profitability of the hotels and established them as a global brand. Thus, the entrepreneurship skills of Becker and Green have revolutionised the already existing technology of the time. But the application of it in a certain way has led to its success.

Conclusion:

From the above analysis, it can be said that the divergent and convergent thinking is essential and for this, in this paper, the differences between divergent and convergent thinking have been described. Side by side the examples from the hospitality industry have been shown in this assignment. The last portion of the assignment discussed the summary of the diagram provided.