Computational Explorations of Creativity and Innovation

This book explores the social dimension of creativity through computational scenarios. The aim of this work is to define, implement and understand the different actors and components of a system and the rules that determine their interaction. Creativity and innovation are explored here in three complementary dimensions: the creative individual, the field of peers and the evolving domain or culture. A number of factors are identified that contribute to the emergence of phenomena that can be associated to creativity and innovation. At the individual level the roles of abilities, persistence, opportunities, imitative behaviour, peer influence, and creative strategies are discussed. At the field level determinants under inspection include group structure, social mobility and organisation, emergence of opinion leaders, established rules and norms, and distribution of adoption and quality assessments. Domain aspects of interest include the generation and access to knowledge, roles of gatekeeping, domain size and distribution, and artefact structure and representation. These insights are discussed in view of current findings and relevant modelling approaches in the literature.