Sustainable Development and Creative Start-ups. Creativity and the uniting and splitting implications of its perceptions.

Abstract: Sustainable development is currently a topic of great interest due to United Nations’ Brundtland report in which a strong case is made for the need to transform societies towards a more sustainable orientation. Despite relatively few studies on the subject, sustainable entrepreneurs are claimed to play a significant role as change agents in sustainable development. For this reason, we chose to make a small contribution and conduct a qualitative case study on a start-up running a sustainable business. Considering that creativity represents an important key driver in the entrepreneurial process of start-ups, we investigate more specifically the creative aspects behind the implementation and development of a sustainable business. This paper aims to investigate how creativity is perceived in a start-up team and the not so positive consequences creativity may have in the context of an innovative sustainable start-up. As a result of our qualitative interviews, we were able to identify the existence of and need for different types of creativity in different situations. This may contradict the theory suggesting a distinction between creative and uncreative team members. Consequently, we conclude that the awareness in a team of the existence of different perceptions of creativity and the coordination of different types of creativity could have some valuable implications for the functioning and further success of a start-up.