08 Journal of Managerial Psychology · Available online August 14, 2026

Creative confidence needs room to move

A two-wave study of employees and leaders links employee-AI collaboration with creativity through skill malleability, while noting that AI anxiety and perceived usefulness affect the relationship.

Name the anxiety

Make space for uncertainty about quality, authorship, skills, and changing roles.

Start with bounded experiments

Choose small, reversible tasks where AI can assist without threatening core judgement.

Reflect on capability

Review what the collaboration helped the person learn—not only what it helped them ship.

The Story

The phrase worth carrying forward is skill malleability: the sense that your abilities can keep changing. That is a more useful frame than asking whether AI is replacing creativity.

For a multidisciplinary designer, this means designing a practice that keeps learning visible. Try a tool, document what changed, notice what became easier, and identify which decisions still require your full attention.

Studios that support experimentation without pretending every experiment works will probably build more durable confidence than studios that simply demand faster adoption. ([sciencedirect.com](https://www.sciencedirect.com/org/science/article/abs/pii/S0268394626000086?utm_source=openai))

Studio Wensday Angle

Treat AI adoption as a learning-and-confidence problem, not just a software rollout.