Creativity support systems: A systematic mapping study

•Systematic mapping study of the creative support systems.•Descriptive statistic about the creative support system characteristics.•Overall trend of creative support systems to focus on idea generation.

As part of the innovation process, creativity has become a critical dimension for organizations that wish to maintain their competitiveness. In order to foster the creativity potential within organizations, processes and systems need to be designed and integrated so that all stakeholders can participate in a coordinated and timely fashion, and despite the various dispersion levels that may separate them. Although many tools are already available on the market or being tested, a significant gap still exists between those products and the creativity process that they are supposed to support. To truly respond to the need for creativity in a distributed environment, it is suggested that the entire process be re-examined and understood so that future Creativity Support Systems can fulfil real needs. This paper is a systematic mapping study of the literature on existing digital tools dedicated to creativity. A thorough examination of over 49 digital tools is carried out, providing the action channel for emerging Creativity Support Systems that would better support collaboration diversity throughout the creative process.