Creativity in numbers and words: the analysis of divergence in creative project perception

Aim/purpose – The main purpose of this paper is to identify the necessity of distinguishing a particular taxonomic group termed creative projects. Is it a peculiar, distinctive type of projects, or nowadays every project can be denominated ‘creative’? The research aims at comparing the ways of understanding and defining this term in prior literature and in the opinions of practitioners involved in everyday project management and realization. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is divided into main parts corresponding to research objectives: first, the results of literature research is demonstrated briefly, and next the results of empirical research are delineated. The empirical research was conducted with mixed methods. The quantitative part conducted as CAWI was supported by Poll Everywhere platform, the qualitative investigations were supported by MAXQDA software. Findings – According to research results, there exists the inconsistency among the views of researchers, as well as practitioners. As the literature review reveals, there are various stances towards this issue: from silent assumption that the concept does not require to be defined till some analyses of the relations between routine and creative actions. Similar variety was disclosed when analyzing practitioners’ judgments. Research implications/limitations – The divergence in opinions as to the necessity of distinguishing a particular taxon of creative projects as well as the broad variety of opinions as to their specific characteristics have given rise to the call for more precise framing scientific research on creative projects. The research has numerous limitations result-ing from its scope, sampling method or sample size, however, it demonstrates the absence of coherent views and variety of arguments used. Originality/value/contribution – Apart from urging the more rigorous frames of research on creative projects, the paper indicates new avenues of investigations oriented towards determining the ways of assessing the level of project creativity. Moreover, the paper opens the further discussion on the education and training of more creative project managers, as well as on the designing creativity-supporting project environment.