Theorizing Creative Challenges: Why Are Social Creativity and Reimagined Universities Necessary for Tackling Society’s Problems?

Abstract

We theorize that social creativity is necessary for addressing the creative challenges—grand opportunities and wicked problems—facing modern society. Our paper seeks to understand why social creativity is an important variable for a theory of creative challenges and why educational institutions can, if reimagined, be ideal for developing this capacity. Drawing on auto-ethnographic methods, we reflect on our five-year collaborative project focused on animating and integrating creativity, interdisciplinarity, design, and entrepreneurship for tackling creative challenges. Our findings yield insights about effective pedagogies and institutional configurations for reproducing social creativity. We find that modern traditional academic institutions, dominated by disciplinary structures, cultures, and exogenous pressures that hinder interdisciplinarity and design, insufficiently develop this necessary prosocial capacity. In contrast, we discuss reimagined academic configurations that balance and integrate both disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. We contribute clarifying rationales for why social creativity, comprising interdisciplinarity, design thinking, and entrepreneurial acumen, as well as the university reimagined are critical for more complete theorizing about creative challenges. Those who research, practice, and make policy for social change should find our observations, reflections, and analysis useful.

Keywords: design thinking, education, grand challenges, interdisciplinarity, social creativity, wicked problems