Microserendipity in the Creative Process

Abstract

Abstract Qualitative research on creativity often highlights the role of accidents in creative process, but there is little research that takes these as its main topic. Perhaps because a model that relies on accidents undermines the meaningfulness of creativity; perhaps because the phenomenon itself is too complex to underwrite an entire research program. This paper suggests the framework of serendipity to better understand the interaction between a person and chance occurrences. Serendipity is a fortuitous accident, the enactment of environmental luck by a prepared mind. Current research on serendipity proceeds from a mainly retrospective position, centring the experience of the person. This creates a serendipitous narrative without necessarily telling us more about the moment itself. It is thus harder to consider the role of accidental moments and the nature of their contribution to the creative process. We argue that these moments, viewed outside of the person’s narrative account, are worthy of study and offer some suggestions for how that might occur. We use the term “microserendipity” to designate moments which arise from distributed creative agency. We suggest we can support current research in both creativity and serendipity by undertaking detailed analysis of observational data to scaffold understanding of these complex phenomena.

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