In a sometime controversial speech at the Corporate Research Forum Creativity and Innovation conference in Athens, Furnham said creativity was a "scientific backwater".
"Can you teach people to be creative? No. Do you want more creative people in your business? No," he said.
Creative people were "less conscientious, less cautious and more neurotic," Furnham said, though he added they were "more curious, open to new experience and open-minded".
In contrast, scientists were "hard-working, fastidious and more conscientious".
Furnham, who was voted 12th Most Influential UK Thinker on HR magazine's 2012 ranking, said HR's intolerance of ambiguity and standardisation of processes did not fit with creativity. If a business tried to reward creativity through traditional mechanisms, it would kill it, he said.
"The joy in creativity is in the activity," he said. "If you take intrinsic motivation and make it extrinsic, then you take the joy away."
Companies needed innovators, not creatives, Furnham argued but there were questions as to where innovation sat in an organisation and what to innovate. In a tongue-in-cheek remark he suggested the development of a chief espionage officer whose job was to steal ideas and become the fast follower.
"It is never the inventor who makes money," he concluded.
