Chaos and creativity in dynamic idea evaluation: Theorizing the organization of problem‐based portfolios

Abstract

Facilitating creativity effectively requires attendance to the complex nature of idea development and the later maturation of the produced ideas. In this theoretical piece, we add something entirely new to the creativity management literature by exploring how the knowledge generated during idea evaluation can facilitate the creation of problem‐based portfolios. We build upon the latest advances in utilizing knowledge from the idea evaluation process to facilitate divergent and convergent production—coined as dynamic idea evaluation (DIE). Using DIE as the theoretical platform, we use chaos theory to explore the complex duality between creative production and the creative negotiation processes in idea evaluation to outline the systemic properties of problem‐based portfolios. We theorize that balancing creative‐sensitive dependency towards convergent and divergent production is vital to understand how people use negotiations to dynamically transform the knowledge they generate during idea evaluation into the improvement of existing ideas and the creation of novel ideas and problem definitions. We also posit that problem definitions will cluster ideas and knowledge about those ideas into dynamic portfolios.