Prior research has used many variants of “be creative” or brainstorm instructions to enhance creativity in a variety of tasks. However, differences in instruction wording may lead to differences in instruction interpretation, and varying the placement of instructions before or after a written problem description may lead to differences in problem interpretation. This study investigated the effect of varying the wording and placement of creativity instructions on idea novelty, workability, and effectiveness. A randomized field experiment in two classrooms found that: (a) brainstorming and “be creative” instructions impact some dimensions of idea creativity, relative to standard instructions; (b) combining the two instructions increased the number of ideas only slightly compared with the “be creative” instruction; (c) the effect of the combined instruction varied across classrooms; and (d) the placement of instructions before or after a written problem description influenced novelty slightly. These results suggest that participant‐constructed meaning of instruction may differ from the researcher‐ascribed meaning and that enhancing the salience of the creativity requirement in instructions does not enhance novelty. The results also lead to propositions that creativity instructions induce a promotion focus during problem‐solving and that creativity climate may moderate the impact of instructions.