Distributed Creativity ― Thinking Outside the Box of the Creative Individual

This book challenges the standard view that creativity comes only from within an individual by arguing that creativity also exists ‘outside’ of the mind or more precisely, that the human mind extends through the means of action into the world. The notion of ‘distributed creativity’ is not commonly used within the literature and yet it has the potential to revolutionise the way we think about creativity, from how we define and measure it to what we can practically do to foster and develop creativity. Drawing on cultural psychology, ecological psychology and advances in cognitive science, this book offers a basic framework for the study of distributed creativity that considers three main dimensions of creative work: sociality, materiality and temporality.

Starting from the premise that creativity is distributed between people, between people and objects and across time, the book reviews theories and empirical examples that help us unpack each of these dimensions and above all, articulate them into a novel and meaningful conception of creativity as a simultaneously psychological and socio-material process. The volume concludes by examining the practical implications in adopting this perspective on creativity.

Vlad Petre Glaveanu is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Associate researcher at LATI, Universite Paris Descartes and Affiliate of the Creativity Marketing Centre, ESCP Europe (London campus). He obtained his BA in Psychology from the University of Bucharest and his MSc in Social and Cultural Psychology and PhD in Social Psychology from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He interests are in creativity and innovation, cultural psychology, social representations, social development, pragmatism and history and psychology. His current work develops a cultural psychological approach to creativity that considers this phenomenon as distributed between self, others, new and existing artefacts. Glaveanu has published theoretical and empirical studies in a variety of journals such as Review of General Psychology, Culture & Psychology, Theory & Psychology, New Ideas in Psychology, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, Creativity Research Journal, Journal of Creative Behavior, Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, Thinking Skills and Creativity, etc. He is Editor or Europe’s Journal of Psychology (EJOP), a quarterly peer reviewed open access publication edited by PsychOpen (Germany).