Creativity on the move: Exploring little-c (p) and big-C (p) creative events within a multidisciplinary design team process

•Challenges conventional studies on creativity as one big leap.•Smaller creative events are overlooked in multidisciplinary design teams.•Smaller creative events don't aggregate into big leaps, but show alignment.•Instead of expertise/discipline, team knowledge level is vital to creative events.•Balance between individual and team is vital for multidisciplinary team success.

Conventional studies on design process consider creativity as one big 'big event' (the 'aha' moment) orchestrated by an individual designer. What is missed here is the contribution of smaller creative events (little-c(p)) that leads to the 'big event' (big-C (p)), and more importantly how they function within multi-disciplinary design teams. While smaller creative events don't necessarily 'add up' to the big creative leap, there are adequate points of alignment. Moreover, rather than set patterns of linear periods of incubation and giant creative leaps, the events follow an ebb and flow. The study also shows that the team member background of knowledge level is critical to the occurrences of creative events, while disciplinary affiliations and expertise of team members are not found as critical. Besides, a good balance between individual performance and team dynamics is vital to the success in a multidisciplinary team process.