Write a brief report relevant to the areas identified in the scenario provided below.

Scenario
You are a small business advisor working for a consultancy specialising in innovation. A CEO of a small business startup approaches you for advice to help them decide whether their idea is viable as a business. They intend to create a new dating website for people between the ages of 30 and above.
While both the CEO and directors have experience of using dating websites, they want to ensure that they develop their dating site based on what is known about the online medium, and specifically want to understand what psychological aspects are relevant to an online dating context. Your role as an advisor here will be to help them understand their future customers better, and identify some things that might be useful areas for innovation.
The online dating market is a very crowded market for a new business, and so as a result the CEO wants to develop a company that is highly creative, with staff supported in developing innovative ways in which people can interact on dating websites. As the CEO is not a psychologist and has little experience in enhancing creativity in organisations, they want to be briefed on what factors would improve creativity, and what they might do to support creativity in their organisation. They are therefore asking you to provide specific information and advice on what factors would be important in developing creativity in this new company.
Bearing in mind that the CEO is not a psychologist, your task is to provide a report explaining and applying the psychological insights about online communication and creativity to the scenario, and to discuss the different perspectives that can provide some recommendations for the company to move forward.

Student notes for Part 2

Focus
This part of the EMA is intended to assess your skills of thinking critically about an applied scenario, in an area that has a multitude of psychological dimensions.
The report you are being asked to write fits a context in which an organisation is planning some organisational change. There are two main issues: the first relates to the use of online communication in an online dating context. The second relates to creativity and the CEO’s desire to create a company that is highly creative. Your focus should therefore be on what the company needs to know about online communication and about creativity as applied to this context.
Your report will need to be concise, and it’s main purpose is to provide an overview of different understandings of online communication and creativity. Given the short word limit, this part of the EMA requires you to use a mainly textual format. You can support your points with appropriate additional elements, such as tables, graphs, or other figures, but please note that tables and figures would still need to be included in your word count and should also be supported by some narrative rather than just be left disconnected to the remainder of the material.
It is appropriate to draw on material that you have found in your independent study time, for example through the Open University Library, as well as the provided module materials.
Command words
There are three command words in the Part 2 question: explain, discuss and apply. The real work your report needs to do is to ultimately provide some recommendations. You do this by explaining different approaches to creativity and online communication. By selecting and discussing this material with reference to the scenario you will in effect be applying this material, which should then enable you to make some practical suggestions about what the CEO might do.
You probably need to break down the task into smaller elements and themes based on the psychological theory and research you have found, and present this in a way that mirrors the scenario.
Throughout it is important that you keep your answer grounded in research and evidence, and that you remain critical.
Tips for writing
You have already produced one report for TMA04, and essentially this is a similar piece of work. The main difference, apart from the topic, is that you will be using material from more than one block. Make sure you refer to your TMA04 feedback about report writing to help you with writing Part 2 of this EMA.
An important element of writing this part of the EMA is to remember your audience and write appropriately for them. Your audience has been identified in the scenario as non-psychologists. Therefore, though you should assume that the audience are professionals and educated to a high standard, you should not assume familiarity with psychological concepts, theories or terminology. Where needed, explain concepts but be careful you do not jargonise your report.
You should also try to make good use of the report format, presenting your material in an appropriate style and structure so that it is clear and concise. Remember that you can use non-textual elements if they would help to get your points across, such as tables, graphs, figures or diagrams. However, make sure that any such elements serve a useful function in your report: do not include them just for the sake of it. Those you do use will count towards your word limit for this assignment.
Although this scenario and question are about creativity at work and online communication, not all the reading you will do will necessarily be based on the workplace or the dating context. The important aspect is to ensure you apply your selected psychological theories and research to the specific issues and themes referred to in this case/scenario (e.g. future employees of the company, and future clients on a dating website). For extra marks, you may find it useful to search for one or two relevant articles outside the module materials that specifically address the areas presented in the scenario.
Be careful not to use too many quotations from module materials or other sources, and keep the ones you do use short and to the point, as they will count towards your word limit. It may be better to avoid them altogether, and write in your own words.

Relevant material for Part 2

The relevant material for this part of the EMA is primarily to be found in the following weeks of the module. There is little content directly relevant to this part of your assignment in the chapters of the module book, but you will find the detailed material on the module website helpful.
Week 25 ‘Living online’ provides the bulk of the content here. You can approach this area by looking at how the internet is different to face to face communication and some of the problems that arise from online communication and self-presentation that may be relevant to the dating context.
Week 9 ‘Relationships and creativity’. Section 4, 5 and 6 of the online materials will be particularly useful for your discussion of the second part of the scenario, namely creativity and what factors enhance creativity.
You might find some of the materials (e.g. Chapter 14) on sexuality relevant, particularly in relation to the idea that one of the strengths of online living is that it enables people to make connections with others. However if you use this at all it will only form a smaller part of your report.
When planning and writing the report, you should refer to the ‘Developing your skills’ material in Sections 6.1−6.5 of Week 21, which cover non-research report writing.
Please note: Chapter 3 also contains some material on creativity but mostly in relation to artificial intelligence; this will have little use for the case scenario you have been given and we recommend you ignore this for the purposes of the report.

Sample Solution