The Involvement of Creativity in Innovative and Sustainable Processes

This contribution is going to provide a dynamic overview of the concept of creative productive thinking, its relationship with design methodologies and possible outcomes. Starting from the nowadays understanding of the concept of creativity, several issues will be tackled in order to reframe the use and the impact that creativity has in sustainable design. In particular, the Systemic Innovation Design Methodology will be highlighted in order to provide the proper tools to the design discipline in the sustainable range of impacts. Moreover, the discipline will be applied to the concept of creativity in order to unpack stereotypes and biases. From the dynamics of collaboration to the processes of problem-setting to the issues of complexity, several elements are going to be shown as strategies, and tools to be integrated into creativity. In a second moment, creativity itself will be defined. Starting from the traditional definition in the field of design, the concept is going to be enlarged—considering other disciplines like sociology and management—in order to provide a more interdisciplinary overview. This will show a better understanding of the role of creative productive thinking in systemic innovative methodology, the educational drive—also in situations of failure—and the impact that can have on social, economic and environmental sustainability. Finally, the contribution will guide towards the understanding of creative productive thinking as a problem-setting—and not just problem-solving—drive, able to shift for sustainable innovation outcomes.