The Cultivation of Innovative Talents in a Collectivistic Social Environment
Li Huai Chang, Dr. Ding Bang Luh

Abstract
Educational research nowadays pays little attention to how innovative talents are cultivated under the East Asian education system influenced by Confucian culture. This qualitative study interviews Taiwanese innovators as a case study, and the analysis focuses on their school experience and parents' attitudes towards education. In an exam-driven school system that stifles one’s creativity, evidence of this study highlights the parents’ parenting styles of innovators provide more encouragement and flexibility to develop innovative skills. The findings suggest that innovative talents grow in the family environment where their parents pass on traditional morals but with less control and less emphasis on academic achievement, allowing innovators more space for self-exploration and developing intrinsic motivation. Generous parental support and trust provide a love, stable and safe environment where variation, innovation, and novelty can blossom.

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