Organization Creativity and the Empiricist Image of Novelty

Abstract

This paper examines the notion of the new (and its associative concepts such as novelty, newness, originality) so central to the organization creativity and innovation literature. Rather than taking the idea of the new and novelty for granted, the ontological and epistemological assumptions regarding the idea of the new deserve a proper analysis. In this article, an empiricist philosophical tradition of thinking represented by for instance James and Deleuze is examined. While rationalist traditions of thinking are praising the new and novelty as an extraordinary event, empiricism conceives of creation and novelty as continually taking place in the restless change innate to being. In empiricist thinking, the idea of the new is something of a truism because new connections and assemblages are continuously produced in the course of action. Thinking of creation and innovation as not extraordinary events but a regular operation may open up for alternative views of creativity and innovation management previously neglected or marginalized.