Content and research question: This project looks at the role of entrainment in
creative projects. Entrainment means that processes or activities that contribute to a
creative project are synchronized, i.e. brought into harmony with one another in terms
of time. In organizational research, it is typically assumed that synchronized processes
are more efficient, because they allow, for example, reacting to environmental
fluctuations and avoiding a production bottleneck. Creative projects, however, are less
about efficiency and more about exploring new and valuable ideas. The creative
processes leading to these ideas have their own temporality: they cannot be planned
according to calendar and clock time. Excessive synchronization along organizational
or regulatory structures may, then, come at the expense of creativity. At the same time,
time pressure can of course also accelerate the generation of ideas - after all, we`ve
all experienced the creativity-enhancing effect of deadlines as just one example. The
aim of this project is to examine the temporality of creative projects more closely. It
starts with the assumption that entrainment can be creativity-enhancing in some
phases of a creative project, e.g. when a focused, intensive level of activity can be
achieved through schedules in order to complete tasks. In other phases, however, it
can be important to decouple the idea development process from dominant temporal
structures (something we call detrainment) as ideas take their time. The primary
research question is: Which organizational practices of de-/entrainment affect creativity
and how in different phases of a creative project?
Our research seeks to contribute to a theory of the temporal structuring of creative
projects in four ways. First, we systematically record creative production cycles in two
fields, music and pharma. Second, we develop a practice-based understanding of
entrainment and detrainment by focusing on the role of the actors in actively structuring
their creative work. Third, we examine the role of different materialities (objects,
spaces, technologies, etc.) in creative processes as essential contributors to creating
temporal structures. Finally, by comparing different creative projects in art and science,
we work out propositions that theorize de-/entrainment as a form of organizing creative
projects.
Methods: As there is no existing theory on the role of entrainment in creative projects,
this project is exploratory and uses ethnographic methods to collect detailed,
qualitative long-term data on the development of creative projects over time. In each
of the two research fields, music and pharma, two project ecologies are examined in
which several creative projects are pursued in parallel. Some of these cases have
already been researched so that a long-term study is possible.
Whats new: Although the temporal complexity of creative projects in and between
organizations has already been emphasized several times, no study to date has
investigated the role of de-/entrainment practices in creative processes.