How Crisis May Generate and Sustain Creative Cycles: The Role of Problem Persistence

Abstract

We performed an inductive study to advance theory on how a crisis can inspire individuals to be persistently creative in successive cycles. We draw from rich data of 17 volunteer projects in the Tech4Covid movement, a Portuguese organization of entrepreneurs who gathered online to develop digital solutions to help society during the COVID-19 pandemic. This empirical context is uniquely suited to study how interactions with intended beneficiaries during crises can encourage creators to initiate and continue creative work. Our results allowed us to extend the knowledge of crisis-induced creative processes in two ways. First, we noticed that throughout the creative process, creators might switch the primary focus of their work from outside beneficiaries to their own benefit. These changes can serve as a trigger to reinforce creators' motivations to continue their creative work beyond the first set of creative outputs. Second, we propose that the nature of the problem to be solved influences the continuity of creative processes: while momentary problems induced by the crisis may stimulate episodic ideas, their transitory nature may prevent creators from having time to fully develop their ideas further. Thus, it is primarily persistent problems that favor the progress of ideas in successive creative cycles.