Will you eat insects? An inductive study of radical creativity

Radical creativity requires pushing against boundaries, often of good taste and social norms. Using an inductive study of the emerging entomophagy market – using insects as a source of food for humans – we reveal that radical creativity is not about coming up with one extremely novel idea, but that it actually requires a cycle of supporting creative activities that both take advantage of negative reactions and attempt to mute them while leveraging sensegiving activities to help potential audiences make sense of the new product.

We introduce the notions of tuning novelty and layering usefulness as theoretical constructs to elucidate the supporting creative work needed to make radically creative products feel more familiar and beneficial to audiences.