Network creativity: A conceptual lens for inter- and intra-organizational creative processes

Creativity is an important concept discussed in different managerial disciplines. It has mainly been dealt with at the individual level. Scholarly interest in team creativity or organizational creativity, is fairly recent in the literature, and the literature provides scarcely any guidance on creativity in inter-organizational processes. Yet, inter-organizational creativity is increasingly important for companies on B2B markets that transform into network or ecosystem structures. This conceptual paper aims to answer the following two research questions: (1) How can the phenomenon of inter-organizational creativity be characterized from a multi-level perspective outside the classical boundaries of organizations? (2) What is the relationship between network creativity and other forms of creativity? Building on both the literature on creativity as well as on business markets, we first assess various perspectives of creativity. We then define and discuss the term “network creativity” as a multilevel and boundary-spanning framing process. Finally, we propose a model that summarizes our thinking.