Ideas in the Space Between: Stockpiling and Processes for Managing Ideas in Developing a Creative Portfolio
通过对独立戏剧和建筑领域创意工作者的质性研究，揭示了创作者如何在多个项目中储备、转化和调动创意，以战略性和象征性两种方式管理创意，从而构建和平衡创意作品集。
Research on the creative process has focused on how an idea develops within a single focal creative project. But creators often work to develop creative portfolios featuring multiple projects that overlap and intertwine over time. Through an inductive qualitative study of creative workers in independent theater and in architecture, we explore how creators manage ideas across multiple projects when developing creative portfolios. Our emergent model shows how creators shift ideas across projects by stockpiling ideas from one creative project, transforming them into resources, and mobilizing them in their portfolios. Our analysis reveals that these practices unfold in distinct ways across two different processes for managing ideas: managing ideas strategically to build portfolios by realizing stockpiled ideas in new creative products across different opportunities, and managing ideas symbolically to balance creative outputs with new meanings constructed from unrealized ideas that represent the creator’s identity and journey. Our findings reveal the critical role of stockpiling in creative work, showing how different ways of stockpiling transform ideas into resources for developing a portfolio. Our portfolio perspective on the creative process informs our understanding of creative portfolios as they develop and evolve as well as the dynamics of creative processes as they unfold across different projects.