Dirty creativity: An inductive study of how creative workers champion new designs that are stigmatized

Abstract

How do creative workers make ideas perceived as tainted acceptable to others? Using a qualitative, inductive study of the emerging entomophagy market – using insects as a source of food for humans – and the Circular Economy – using waste, pollution, and other tainted resources as raw materials for new products – we introduce a new form of creativity we label dirty creativity. Our findings demonstrate that creative workers use two sets of tactics to make dirty creativity more acceptable: relocating dirt (locating the stigma within a network of common ideas) and recasting dirt as value (extolling features of dirty that redeem the value of the material). Our inductive theory reveals that creative workers champion their products by drawing attention to the dirtiness while simultaneously mitigating the ramifications of doing so. In doing so, our research advances theory and research on creativity by shifting the locus of creative work from the early stages of idea generation to the intermediate phase of idea championing and by highlighting the importance of dirty creativity and the effort needed to shape dirty creativity into acceptable designs.