Ideas and innovations drive the success of companies and even of entire economies. Ultimately, it is a motivated workforce that determines the effectiveness and competitiveness of organizations in knowledge intensive environments. Companies are therefore faced with the question of how to incentivize idea and knowledge creation. To date, there is only a small literature in economics that studies the effectiveness of different kinds of incentives for creative output, and the existing evidence is mixed. The proposed study build on this literature and provide insights into how creativity is affected by different kinds of rewards.The project investigated this question using personnel data from a large international software company that has implemented rewards for the generation of new ideas. Furthermore, the analysis was complemented with an experiment that allowed to dig deeper into the question if, when and why different rewards affect creativity in a controlled setting.