An invitation to the unseen world of networked creativity: Tracing idea journeys through the new infrastructures of work

Due to the itinerant, mobile nature of entrepreneurial work conducted by individuals, teams, and organizations, focusing on any single location has serious limits in terms of understanding how collaborative spaces can support the creative process. We respond to these limitations by proposing an enlarged perspective embedded in the concept of “networked creativity” and by advocating a methodology that allows us to trace the development of ideas through multiple spaces and interactions. To illustrate the relevance of our approach, we recount one entrepreneur’s journey through East London’s collaborative infrastructures over the course of a single day, followed by a detailed account of our longitudinal methodology and its theoretical rationale. We then discuss why tracing idea journeys through the new infrastructures of work is both a necessary and productive endeavor from a practical perspective, too. In closing, we consider the implications of the networked creativity approach to collaborative spaces research. We argue throughout the chapter that scholarship must transcend or at least ameliorate the single-space focus that still dominates this field. The Appendix forms an important supplement to our chapter, offering a walk-through of our approach to data collection while highlighting recent challenges, including how we secured research subjects for our ESRC-funded study of the idea journeys of 12 early-stage entrepreneurs over 12 months in London.