The Phenomenology of Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship

Abstract

In our social world, we find extreme variations in the patterns of creati\-vity, innovation, and success at the entrepreneurial activities derived from those patterns. It is the author’s assertion that greater rates of creativity can be achieved by joining the sociological study of phenomenology to that of the entrepreneurial and economic disciplines. In particular, this paper considers the culmination of 100~years of sociological theorizing that has not penetrated various other social disciplines and practical applications, like entrepreneurship, leadership, and strategic planning. Phenomenology is discussed using six assumptions: People have a stock knowledge that is their reality; this stock knowledge bestows a taken-for-granted sense of reality; we learn this stock knowledge from each other; we assume that others share our stock knowledge; there is nothing intrinsic about what we believe to be real in our social world; and there is a presumption\break that the world is the same for all other people that we inhabit a common social world. Three kinds of examples are provided—political, organizational/economic, and historical/military. In all three examples, the author applies phenomenology to show how creativity is unbounded by applying the concepts of phenomenology and thereby breaking the presumed constraints of our social beliefs.