Creative Actions and Organizations: Towards a Reflexive Sociology of Serendipity

In today’s highly innovative organizations, creative processes are proceduralized in the form of techniques and they give rise to routine phenomena. In my career path, academic and professional, I have dealt with the topic in various publications (D’Alessandro, 2001; 2008; 2010a; 2010b; 2010c; 2012a; 2012 b; 2013; 2014; 2015; 2019a; 2020b). Years ago, I started from the idea of rebuilding a sociological dialogue of creativity in organizations. In doing so, I hybridized paradigms: Donati’s relational sociology, the luhmanian systemic approach, Von Foerster's radical constructivism, Sennett’s ideas on the craftsman, the ideas of Wittgenstein and Searle on language, the ideas of Dummett and of Goedel on logic, Hofstadter’s on artificial intelligence. I have drawn on over 600 works including essays and articles, identifying currents of thought of scholars who have dealt with the topic. At the same time I have been a participating observer for years, visiting: a) communication agencies; b) consultancy companies; c) training institutes and universities; d) cultural associations; e) publishing houses etc. In all the organizations I have observed, there are techniques that trigger routines in creativity management. From 1999 to 2015 I surveyed 200 techniques, each of which presented elements also present in the other techniques: common meta-rules of opposition, combination and separation that determine creative behavior and are triggered by a recursive but paradoxical relationship between thought and language. This monograph destroys commonplaces on creative processes, inaugurating a reflective sociology on serendipity.