The Sources of Novelty: A Cultural and Systemic View of Distributed Creativity

This article discusses the limitations of the first generation of creativity‐management technologies based on the psychological theories of intelligence and problem solving. The turn into a cultural and systemic conceptions in the psychology of creativity is analysed. It is argued that this psychology converges with the ideas developed in the sociology of knowledge, the history of technological systems, and activity theory as well as in innovation studies. All of them underline the significance of artefact‐mediated communities, domains or practices. They agree on the importance of combining heterogeneous cultural resources and knowledge by horizontal networking across the boundaries of knowledge and activity domains. The internet‐mediated new communities are discussed as emerging forms of distributed creation. A challenge for the management of creativity is to study and learn from the emerging problems, means and patterns of conduct of these communities.