As AI continues to become more relevant, many companies start using it for speed, automation, and cost-cutting. But what if rather than treating AI as a tool for efficiency we embrace it as a partner in creativity? To explore this question, we interviewed Dijana Aleksić, part-time PhD candidate at Rotterdam School of Management and lead author of the study “Your Wish Is My Command? Letting GenAI Out of the Bottle to Channel Employee Creativity.” According to Aleksić, we should approach GenAI not as a tool, but as a creative medium that encourages people to think differently, experiment freely, and grow. This article explores how GenAI changes the way we think about skills, and how companies can harness it to empower employees.
Human Creativity and GenAI
Many people are concerned about GenAI replacing human employees, but human creativity isn’t going anywhere, with GenAI actually making it more accessible and essential. Aleksić explains that GenAI doesn’t just execute tasks, but it allows collaboration.
This collaboration happens through conversation. When someone works with GenAI, they’re not just giving commands, they’re engaging in a process, drawing on human and AI cognitive capabilities like reasoning, problem-solving, and critical thinking. Aleksić explains these are very important human skills that GenAI can support but never replace., It can learn and reproduce from historical data, being there for people to bounce their ideas off of, but it will always need collaboration with humans to produce anything meaningful.
Importantly, Aleksić stresses that everyone can be creative and that creativity is a skill that can be learned. She claims that creativity comes in many forms, learning something new, finding a better way to complete a task, or simply asking a different kind of question, she explained during our conversation. GenAI can support this creative potential, even in roles that are not traditionally considered as creative.
Supporting Creativity Within Organisations
Organizations need to rethink how they support creativity using GenAI as often-times the focus is only on productivity. Aleksić warns that standard performance metrics often miss the process behind creative thinking. She highlights that companies often miss the deeper value of reflection, experimentation and growth.
Aleksić makes a parallel between children’s and adults’ creativity. Children are naturally creative because they’re given space to play, ask questions, and try new things. The same applies to employees. When companies encourage curiosity and allow room for failure and reflection, creative thinking flourishes. Time away from constant work production, such as taking a walk or talking through an idea, often leads to breakthroughs. Aleksić highlights that many creative insights happen when we’re not actually performing work in the traditional sense.
GenAI fits into this picture as a collaborative partner. When used thoughtfully within the workplace, it can aid reflection, support idea creation, speed up exploration, and provide feedback, leading to new directions and potential breakthroughs. It becomes a part of the team, a new coworker to bounce ideas back and forth with. It is no longer just a tool, but a collaborator that helps employees think more deeply. The careful use of GenAI combined with an organisational culture that promotes reflection, experimentation and growth can really be a successful team, leading to more creative and innovative workplaces.
Don’t Automate the Human Out of the Process
There’s a growing trend of using AI to automate recruitment, especially by filtering CVs. “If we automate the filtering of CVs using AI, we risk standardizing sameness and losing innovation,” she said. Aleksić cautions about high-volume use of AI in recruitment practices as they can lead to excluding interesting, but not necessarily typical candidates, which in time can lead to the decrease of diversity and with that, decrease innovation.
At Skills Based, we see this too often. Companies rely on rigid hiring criteria and candidate profiles, then wonder why they can’t find fresh ideas. The truth is that many high-potential candidates have atypical backgrounds. Filtering them out of the process means missing what they could bring to the table.There’s also a risk that organizations will use GenAI to replace junior employees. That might seem efficient in the short term by having computers do easier tasks that career starters usually perform. Aleksić explains that this weakens the long-term talent pipeline. Entry-level roles are where people build skills, receive mentorship, and learn the organizational culture.
Instead of pushing juniors out, Aleksić suggests bringing them in as digital natives. Many career starters may be familiar with GenAI tools and can help integrate them more effectively into existing teams. This reverse mentoring creates value on both sides and helps close generational skill gaps.
A Call for Human-GenAI Collaboration
For companies like Skills Based, GenAI is an opportunity. It allows us to support talent in becoming more confident, experimental, and engaged. It helps our candidates develop and grow, learning how to be creative in different ways.
To make this possible, organizations must focus less on automation, and more on what GenAI can help employees become. That shift, from tool to partner, is where the real value lies. The careful use of GenAI combined with an organisational culture that promotes reflection, experimentation and growth can really be a successful team, leading to more creative and innovative workplaces.
