A Business Process Management Perspective on Creativity: Creativity Intensive Processes

Although creativity is a core competitive factor and an important element of primary activities of modern organizations in many domains, there has not been an in-depth investigation on how creativity influences business processes and business process management. Within interviews with creative workers, managers and teaching professionals from the Screen Business it became evident that the existence of creativity in an organization influences business processes and has significant impact on how these should be designed and can be supported. Based on a definition of Business Process Management and on a literature review on Creativity and Creative Processes I introduce the notion of the Creativity Intensive Process. These processes are characterized by the existence of creative tasks that are carried out by creative persons in creative environments in order to create creative products. Based on the results of the initial activities of this research I introduce research questions along with the research design and a set of propositions related to the research questions. These propositions will serve as guidance for further in-depth case studies to develop a theoretical model of Creativity Intensive Processes. The paper concludes with an outlook to the future research agenda.