Creativity and Qualitative? Can we be both?

There is plenty of evidence that creativity in some form is accepted as part of what we do. Bill Schlackman - arguably the founding father of UK qualitative research - once said: 'The most important skill we can offer our clients is our creativity.' (Burns, 1999). We show creativity each time we decide exactly how to conduct a piece of qualitative research. The creative choices involved in conducting a qualitative study also extend to the analysis (McGivern, 2003) and to the final presentation of the qualitative learning (Gordon, 1999). So, creativity of some kind is an inherent part of how we approach every stage of a qualitative project.

But are we really geared up for applied 'creativity'? Philly Desai says 'qualitative research and creativity make uneasy bedfellows' (2002:48). He argues that 'qualitative researchers possess a set of skills relevant to facilitating innovation, but their outlook, mindset and priorities can often inhibit creativity' (2002:49). And maybe it's true that as qualitative researchers, we are traditionally more experienced at exploring and evaluating new ideas than at generating them in the first place.

But these views are not incompatible; the writers are just talking about different things. Certainly, traditional qualitative research with consumers alone may not help much in pure 'ideation' the generation of new ideas. Consumers are not inventors and cannot necessarily tap into their creative potential as and when we desire (Earls, 2002). The traditional format of the group discussion is indeed 'reflective' rather than 'generative'.

Beyond this, however, it is my view that creativity tools and techniques can be applied to every aspect of problem solving - and this is what we are commonly doing in qualitative projects. 'Creativity' approaches can help with defining or redefining the problem and with exploring and understanding its context. They can help in obtaining reactions to newly generated ideas and can indeed help assess the validity of an action plan for example (Bystedt et al, 2003).

Outside commercial research, people are certainly applying 'creative' approaches to qualitative methods: see, for example, the use of metaphors in qualitative analysis (Aubusson, 2002) or in research with families (Deacon, 2000). And clients increasingly expect us to be more imaginative and innovative qualitatively (Kiddle and Williamson, 2002). So, as qualitative researchers, we could and should be as 'creative' as we wish to be... like Nancarrow et al (2004), I think we need to break the rules, even break with the traditions of qualitative research. We need to integrate applied creativity within our daily qualitative work - to become, if you like, 'qualitative creatives' (Desai, 2002). I would like to propose that there are many mindsets, approaches, tools and techniques that can be learned from the applied creativity world and usefully applied to qualitative marketing or social research.

But before we go on, let's consider what it means to be 'creative'.
 

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