New and Useless: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Organizational Creativity

The purpose of this article is to advance research on creativity in organizations by developing a psychoanalytic perspective from which creativity may be understood as an imaginary construction of the self. This self aims at producing the new and useful yet fails to do so. The useful is only marginally so, and many of the interactions designed to ensure usefulness result in socially useless activities. The article suggests, however, that from a psychoanalytic perspective, the failure of the imaginary is also useful. It is useful to the creative person as subject of the unconscious providing opportunities for struggles with otherness and alienation. Such struggles allow respondents to experience their creative potential and produce something beyond organizational kitsch. The implications for the theory and practice of organizational creativity are discussed.