Darwin and Lamarck in creative ideas: a qualitative study of inventors’ stories

Knowledge creation has been enormously emphasized in recent years as the critical factor for long term economic growth. Knowledge creation can affect individuals and societies by increasing economic opportunities. In order to see the knowledge creation process, individuals who have different approaches to the problems can be a starting point to understand creativity in inventions. Accordingly, this study aims to understand the generation process of inventive ideas from inventors’ point of view. Inventors in cancer research are interviewed by asking the question of how they came up with their inventive ideas. From inventors’ stories six themes are developed: stumbled into solution, like raising arm, tried different things, open to variety, possibility of error, and extension from previous knowledge. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013