Double or Quits: Understanding the Links between Secrecy and Creativity in a Project Development Process

Creativity and secrecy

Recent studies on creativity and secrecy have underlined the positive relationship between hiding an activity and the outcome of doing so. For instance, authors focusing on the development of illegal activities such as bootlegging (Augsdorfer, 2005, 2008; Criscuolo etal., 2013; Masoudnia & Szwejczewski, 2012) or knowledge-hiding (Černe, Nerstad, Dysvik, & Škerlavaj, 2014; Connelly, Zweig, Webster, & Trougakos, 2012) have shown that such acts can enhance the creativity of individuals, thereby catalysing organizational creativity. It is also observed in contexts as different as video games (D’Angelo et al., 2005), and movies (de Vany 2004), or in corporations such as 3M (Garud et al., 2011). This largely acknowledged relationship has led scholars to question the factors that trigger the development of these initiatives both at the individual level and at the organizational level.

Studies focusing on the individual level have analysed the profiles of those individuals who are more likely to pursue secret activities (Augsdorfer, 2008), and of their reference groups (Haas & Park, 2009). They found that the personal characteristics of individuals and certain managerial features of organizations are crucial to understanding the development of secret activities that lead to creative results. At the organizational level, research has attempted to describe managerial policies and organizational arrangements that encourage secret initiatives. For instance, it showed that as managers design the reward system or fine-tune their attitude towards secrecy they will increase the likelihood that employees will engage in secret activities (Černe et al., 2014; Criscuolo et al., 2013) that can feed back into the organizational agenda once their results meet the expected criteria (Mainemelis, 2010).

Despite this interest in the relationship between secrecy and creativity, little is known about the concrete mechanisms through which secrecy enhances creativity. Generally, authors assume that by developing activities secretly, individuals are constantly furthering their capacity to explore (Mainemelis, 2010), and to bring ideas that can provoke major changes (Criscuolo et al., 2013) because this activity develops out of sight of criticism. These insights are useful; however, we contend that these studies, like studies on creativity more generally (Drazin, Glynn, & Kazanjian, 1999), are based on the assumption that creativity is introduced at the organizational level by isolated individuals who largely rely on their own dispositions and skills (Amabile, 1983), and on the environmental or social factors motivating those individuals (Amabile, 1996). Although recent research recognizes the role of the group in encouraging individuals to develop secret activities (Haas & Park, 2009), and in triggering individuals’ willingness to inject their ideas and discoveries at the organizational level (Criscuolo et al., 2013; Mainemelis, 2010), creativity is still largely assumed to be an individual matter. Environmental or social factors are enablers of personal or team creativity, but the interactions among individuals, and between individuals and their environment, are rarely accounted for. Yet, some studies show that colleagues often seem to know that an activity is being developed secretly by a peer (see for instance Criscuolo et al., 2013). However, the study of mechanisms that arise from synergies among people interacting is largely ignored.

This is all the more problematic because secrecy is largely considered by previous research in organization theory and sociology to be ‘an ongoing accomplishment of social interactions’ (Costas & Grey, 2016, p. 7). Sharing a secret puts individuals into a peculiar situation (Simmel, 1906) that can itself influence creativity, beyond the fact that developing an activity secretly allows for protection of an idea from criticism. We discuss this view in the following section.

Secrecy as a social configuration

In his sociology of secrecy, Simmel (1906) argues that secrecy is an outcome of the social fabric (Costas & Grey, 2016) involving the creation of boundaries, cohesive ties and collective identities, all of which give rise to a state of specialness. Indeed, the utilization of secrecy involves the creation of a parallel world with a limited membership, as well as norms that are specific to this social space (Simmel, 1906). Therefore, secrecy is viewed as a marker of belonging or a claim of possession (Costas & Grey, 2014). This configuration creates social cohesion among secret holders, accentuating feelings of possession and the exclusion of adversaries (Parker 2016; Simmel, 1906). Indeed, secrecy can become ‘a tactic used by those who don’t have the resources or numbers to accomplish their goals through the methods of ordinary politics’ (Streeter, 2008, p. 248, in Parker, 2016). This definition recognizes that organizations produce secrecy not only because people enjoy being in cabals or creating enclaves of freedom to accomplish their goals (Courpasson, Dany, & Clegg, 2012; Parker, 2016), but also because hierarchical modes of control prevent actors from introducing ideas that do not fit with the dominant managerial rationale. Therefore, the creative dimension of secrets comes from the capacity to sustain a relationship between the secret world and the visible-official world, being at the same time hidden and interacting with the outside world. Indeed, on the one hand, the secret group is constantly attempting to exclude others to protect its secret but, on the other hand, it endeavours to subtly establish a relationship with others that allows the secret-holders to achieve their goal. For instance, inventing a fiction permits a male secret society to establish a peculiar relationship with women, who ignore the existence of the secret as well as the factitious aspect of the story told (Simmel, 1906).

Generally, developing a secret gives rise to a state of exception. Simmel (1906, pp. 464–465) argues that ‘secrecy give[s] the person enshrouded by it an exceptional position (…) naturally heightened in the degree in which the exclusively possessed secret is significant and comprehensive’. For Simmel, secret-holders can feel they are part of an elite. They live a sense of ‘specialness’ (Costas & Grey, 2016, p. 109). Secrecy generates excitement and makes people ‘feel important, fully engaged’ (Ellsberg, 2002, p. 46), but it also generates anxiety and fear (Costas & Grey, 2016, p. 129). The sense of exceptionality can therefore be burdensome. On the other hand, exceptionality derives from the very social configuration that actors set for themselves. Indeed, the state of exception has been theorized by Agamben (2005) as a temporary suspension of the rule of law, which permits introduction of ‘the rule of the new’ (Jakobsson & Stiernstedt, 2010). It is not a space without norms, but with norms that are created from within to serve the purpose of the secret group, and one that imposes a ‘disciplinary influence’ on its members (Simmel, 1906, p. 473).

Secrecy as a catalyst of creativity

In this paper, we understand creativity as an ongoing interactive process through which new ideas emerge and are introduced in organizations regardless of their impact on performance (Chen, 2009; Hargadon & Bechky, 2006; Hjorth, 2012). This definition allows us to capture what it is that happens between actors (Hjorth, 2012) and, more particularly, around the secret, that favours creativity. Studying secrecy and creativity as intertwined social relationships helps to disentangle the complexity of the circumstances through which secrets catalyse collective creativity.

The isolation of a space from managerial control is an important condition for creativity, mainly because it allows for open exchanges among those actors who believe in the potential of a different way of doing things. For instance, research on the emergence of a new scientific field shows how workshops that are organized on an island release the pressure of criticism that must be faced by actors who believe in ideas that do not fit the mainstream point of view (Parker & Hackett, 2012). Actors are shown to worry less about the consequences of sharing immature ideas that can now be further discussed with participants. Through the creation of a parallel world, secrecy has the potential to provide such a space for creativity because the secret space allows exchanges that are not bound by the dominant norms of organizations. Indeed, studies focusing on the conditions of successful introduction of novel ideas in organizations show the importance of the political process in shaping the conditions for creativity; they show that a good idea is not sufficient and must be accompanied by a political work enabling the construction of an environment that is favourable to the reception of the idea (Obstfeld, 2012), its proper presentation (Drazin et al., 1999) and its eventual defence.

Finally we should not forget that the state of exception induced by secrecy produces feelings and positions that can either favour or impede creativity. For instance, Parker and Hackett (2012) show how spending pleasant moments together pushes scientists to work harder on topics of shared interest. The state of exception generated by secrecy also leads to such pleasant and friendly moments (Simmel, 1906). Contrariwise, finding oneself interacting with colleagues outside the codified frame of the organization might be intimidating for individuals if they experience negative peer pressure which can lead to self-censorship (Paulus, Brown, & Ortega, 1999; Mullen, Johnson, & Salas, 1991). Overall, we make the assumption that the state of exception should have an impact on creativity because it induces social, political and emotional forms of everyday interactions that influence the creative process. Our study aims to explain the influence of some of these mechanisms on the collective creativity of an R&D team.

Data

For the purpose of this paper, our data comprise nine interviews conducted in 2004 with six members of Marc’s team, as well as two members of the marketing department that we would contact later (in 2005). In 2006, we interviewed the manager (called Gilles in this paper) of the focal business unit, also Chair of the R&D committee, to better understand how corporate management experienced the situation and how it was eventually solved through the secret action of Marc’s team. We also interviewed the head of the marketing department (called Jos in this paper) after he left the company in 2005. We met some of Marc’s team members several times to obtain further information, which accounts for a total of 24 interviews. In addition to observations from these interviews, material includes content analysis of diverse notes and reports from meetings, written by Marc, who says in the second interview we conducted with him in January 2004:

The issue was to work on the project discreetly, so we would not communicate through any channel that could spot our intentions. I decided to write notes myself, from oral conversations and meetings, and keep them safely at home away from the eyes of management. We had to keep that entire secret as much as we could.

We chose the case of Marc’s team for this study because it highlights the role of certain practices of secrecy in diverting managerial attention and boosting collective efforts. We see how this diversion helped R&D members to spend more time working on their project and become more creative. Marc works with a team of twelve people: ten scientists aged 24 to 45, and two laboratory technicians aged 28 and 39. The project officially started in June 2002, after the potential of this molecule to show therapeutic promise in laboratory animals had been recognized in a few publications. While the team believed in this research orientation, there were not enough elements to put it on the research agenda of the firm through official channels, mainly because its market readiness was still uncertain. The scientists on Marc’s team ‘went secret’, a decision that facilitated their capacity to introduce their novel idea in the firm.

We used Marc’s team to explore the links between secret activities and organizational creativity, focusing our empirical efforts on individual narratives and interpretations of past events (Hjorth & Steyaert, 2004). However, this approach poses difficult methodological challenges: it requires detailed description of the process of secrecy, and requires privileged informants to reveal what might otherwise remain hidden, at least partially, within the corporation. Indeed, even if the story is now over and the secret may have been revealed, not all details of past everyday interactions have been brought to light, which can disturb some informants. The critical challenge is to look beyond the mere description of events in order to capture how they are subjectively experienced and interpreted. Secrecy is situated in time and space; therefore, contextually sensitive data are necessary to appreciate the meaning that our informants apply to their own decisions and acts. Case studies on secrets are difficult to identify and investigate, all the more so in a context of conflict and managerial vigilance: they require access to hidden data, some possibly having been removed to minimize risks. Therefore documents are not always available to the researchers, and questions abound regarding the validity of the collected data.

Another issue is that retrospective accounts of former ‘secret holders’ cannot be taken at face value, if only because they might be suspect as ‘ex-post inventions’ (Straughn, 2005, p. 1619). The validity challenge is all the more critical when the narration appears at times to be a ‘heroic tale’, depicting actors struggling against unjust decisions. The story we tell in this paper is not an exception.

For the purpose of this paper it is also important to note that empirical investigation of secrecy is by definition uncertain (Greve, Palmer, & Pozner, 2010, p. 69). Due to its very ubiquity, secrecy can remain unnoticed by the researcher. In our investigation, secrecy manifested itself in ways that were not immediately clear. Our informants would not directly address the idea of intentional concealment of information. They were more direct in narrating how they invented a story to divert managerial attention, because they regarded us as researchers (although in social sciences) who could understand and even share this type of trick. A kind of ‘occupational trust’ could be instilled in a number of instances with our informants, where they described events with humour, presenting the process of secrecy as an example of the jokes that the R&D group was sharing in order to illustrate their playful cohesion in the company.

Different sources were gathered in order to overcome these challenges as much as possible, and to understand the events as they occurred. An important aspect of our method is that personal narratives provide a valuable approach to the study of secret events and to the parallel individual interpretations of the personal risks that people may take to protect their life and career (Becker, 1963; Cotton, Shen, & Livne-Tarandach, 2011; Shamir, Dayan-Horesh, & Adler, 2005). Furthermore, we seek additional support for the coherence of interviews by collecting more solid records (Denzin, 1989). Accordingly, in addition to the data gathered during interviews themselves, we collected different sorts of documents: fifteen email exchanges between Marc (the team manager) and one of the authors of this paper between February 2004 and October 2006, mostly consisting of news about Marc’s life and career; company documents provided by Marc; copies of emails received or sent by Marc. Emails that were exchanged frequently between Marc and other protagonists actually give a dual character to the structure of our data by showing Marc’s respect for the facts, even though his retelling of the events may ‘heighten the entertainment value of the story or the social prestige of the narrator cum protagonist’ (Straughn, 2005, p. 1620). Such duality is also valuable in portraying the relationship between secrecy and creativity as a complex phenomenon involving numerous parties rather than as an isolated act. Therefore, while we acknowledge that accounts relayed after the fact may be incomplete and subjective, they are nonetheless indispensable in complementing other data and study elements that cannot be easily identified in written documents (Straughn, 2005, p. 1620) or studied as events unfold, when participants may be reluctant to incur the risks associated with sharing an ongoing experience.

During the interview process, Marc and his colleagues were asked to narrate the salient events and turning points of their secret work, as well as specific circumstances surrounding key moments of the process; crucial actions and decisions; further developments and consequences of their activities. Overall, by focusing interviews on events and acts, and by cross-verifying them, we believe that we limited the subjective aspect inherent to studies relying on narratives. Also, since different sources of data were triangulated, we attempted to reduce the bias of the process of secrecy and creativity.

Data analysis

Knowing little about the problems of R&D projects at the onset of this study, we chose to pursue our investigations inductively, relying on an interpretive approach to the narratives that our informants opted to share with us. Some scholars argue that narratives have significant subversive or transformative potential: ‘A central, if not the central, concern underlying narrative studies…is to give voice to the subject: to collect, interpret, and present materials about human experiences that preserve the voice of the subject’ (Bell, 1991, p. 245 in Ewick & Silbey, 1995). We could thus focus on building an emergent theory from the perspective of those living an experience (Corley & Gioia, 2004) – in this case, the experience of sharing secrets and working secretly on an R&D project. The issue of covert strategies used by R&D team members to cope with the decision to abandon their project emerged inductively. Initially, research questions covered the following subject matters: What experiences, feelings, and opinions do R&D managers and their teams express with regard to their company management, changes in their work requirements, and new job-related constraints and pressures? Marc, the team manager, evoked the case of his project after about thirty minutes of interview; the interview turned into an exploration of the decision to ‘go secret’, and of what happened and was done in the ‘parallel world’ created by Marc and his team mates. Later we interviewed several other members of the research team, based on Marc’s recommendations. We were particularly intrigued by the eventual ‘victory’ of the scientists, and how they took the abandonment of their project by management as a trigger to continue working on it and to come up with convincing and creative developments after several months of secret work.

The question related to secrecy and creativity emerged inductively. In order to focus our research question on the links between secrecy and creativity, we paid special attention to informants’ responses to particular questions, such as those regarding their concerns (e.g. ‘How did you feel about doing something unapproved by managers?’); when their secret action became central to their job (e.g. ‘About what point in the process did you start your clandestine activities?’); and the pivotal moment at which they began to feel they were making progress or winning over the other parties. We also asked them about their vision of the use of specific stories that they recognized as being only half true, and about their importance in changing managerial perceptions of the R&D project.

The issue of secrecy appeared gradually during the interviews, as well as the growing cohesive bonds within the R&D group. Therefore, we eventually devoted time to examining personal feelings regarding the sharing of information that was hidden from managerial gaze, as well as the vulnerability associated with such secrecy and its impact on relations within the group. A tension between hiding and disclosing a secret began to emerge, along with a sense of cohesiveness and intimacy derived from vulnerability. We could also perceive that team members were sharing a heightened sense of responsibility to get the job done because of their feeling that they were working in a very unusual situation, an idea that we eventually associated with the notion of ‘exceptionality’. This inductive progression in our development of the idea of a link between secrecy and creativity necessitated repeated interviews (on two or three occasions) with informants who agreed to do so in order to deepen our understanding of this facet of their work environment, since we could not observe practices of secrecy in vivo.

Consequently, the analysis of our transcripts and other materials involved standard inductive processes in which we operated back and forth between data and theory, focusing on instances where the creative efforts of scientists could be related to practices of secret-keeping and linked activities. Using an open coding system we identified substantial numbers of significant themes that matched Simmel’s (1906) description of the process of secret production and secret-keeping. These include codes such as sharing anger and disappointment, subverting resources, making personal sacrifices… which were refined into broader categories (Corbin & Strauss, 1990). For example, data coded under category headings as diverse as ‘creating a fiction’, ‘setting a division of tasks’ and ‘fuelling optimism and maintaining expectations’ ultimately came to be assimilated under a broader category that we called ‘maintaining managerial attention for novelty’. We defined three categories: ‘creating a parallel world’, ‘maintaining managerial attention for novelty’ and ‘a state of exception catalysing creativity’. These broader categories reflect the process of constructing and keeping a secret, and they incorporate a creativity process wherein cohesiveness and the construction of a fiction favour the emergence of a state of exception that catalyses creativity. This is because creative energy is produced as a consequence of the vulnerability introduced by secrecy; necessary cohesion, sense of responsibility and sense of urgency push actors to change the existing arrangements inside the firm and thereby introduce novelty (Gartner, 2012; Hjorth, 2005, 2012). Indeed, in responding to our questions, scientists systematically connected the exceptional experience of secret-related activities to their creative work: the cohesive atmosphere of the project motivated members to work harder and to make sacrifices. Indeed, this creative energy arises because ‘secrecy can spur excitement and heightened emotivity, not least because it inherently involves the vulnerability of revelation’ (Costas & Grey, 2016, p. 28). The state of exceptionality that we observed reflects this situation, which is temporary, and which gives rise to shared feelings and the necessity of inventing new arrangements.

To be sure, analysis revealed a large amount of data related to the creation of a ‘parallel world’ (Simmel, 1906) within which scientists could work according to their views and aspirations along with their partners. We interpreted the creation of this separated world as an exceptional situation that also impacted on the collective pressure to succeed. Over time we came to understand that scientists were developing creativity in order to cope with this pressure which their very decision of secret-holding was generating. In other words, production of secrets appeared to encourage scientists to strive harder in accordance with the pressure they themselves had created to work quickly and efficiently. The link between cohesiveness, vulnerability and efficiency was clearly central in the data. In the same manner, we focused on the constitution of the fiction as a central element to maintain managerial attention for their novel idea, but also to fuel the belief of the team in the relevance of their work. Indeed, every scientist mentioned the fiction and cohesiveness as conditions of the team’s eventual success, indicating that they were sharing important portions of their experience as secret-keepers.

The creation of a parallel world

Simmel (1906) argues that secrets derive their power from the creation of a parallel world alongside the manifest one, thus narrowing the scope of what the upper rungs of a hierarchy can control, while easing the process of hiding information and initiatives. In this section, we present findings that show that the parallel world emerges in everyday interactions among team members, and allows them to work according to norms and at a pace that deviate from official managerial directives. At the same time, the parallel world increases the vulnerability of the group while also allowing for the strengthening of cohesion among members, thereby intensifying interactions and leaving space for more occasions for novelty to arise.

Maintaining managerial attention for novelty

Another feature of secrecy is the creation and maintenance of a relationship between the group holding the secret and others. Usually, this relationship is created through a fiction that increases the influence of a group over other actors. Simmel (1906) makes reference to male secret societies where husbands appeared to their wives wearing masks, intending to make them believe in ghosts and thereby obtain their compliance through fear. The creation of a fiction also appeared necessary in our case, not to influence others on a long-term basis, but rather to maintain managerial attention: indeed, the introduction of novel ideas necessitates the establishment of an arrangement (Drazin et al., 1999) or the construction of an opportunity (Rindova, Barry, & Ketchen, 2009). Our case shows that the fiction permits maintenance of a continuous relationship between the group and the rest of the organization, as it provides occasions to interact regarding the project, thus preserving a potential opportunity to defend the new research orientation.

A state of exception catalysing creativity

Our findings show that secrecy generates a situation wherein a company’s strictures are exceptionally disregarded, and work can occur according to new norms. This state of exception has been theorized by Agamben (2005) as a temporary suspension of the rule of law, which permits proposal of a ‘rule of the new’ (Jakobsson & Stiernstedt, 2010). This state permits norms to emerge from within to serve the purpose of the secret group, and that impose a ‘disciplinary influence’ on members (Simmel, 1906). Following de Certeau (1984), we view the state of exception as permitting actors to constitute the very material on which their practices of poiésis (to make, or to create) can be put to work. In this section we show how enfranchisement allowed by secrecy transforms the perception of time at work, stretching it to the maximum, and intensifies a sense of responsibility toward the organization that enhances the creativity of actors.

A state of exception

Simmel wrote that ‘Secrecy involves a tension which, at the moment of revelation, finds its release’ (Simmel, 1906, p. 465). In this section we suggest that this tension is also lived by secret-holders as an experience of exceptionality. There is always a tension in working in secrecy, and we argue that the pressure generated by concretely experiencing this tension every day is an essential enhancer of collective creativity. We argue that secrecy enhances creative efforts by generating a situation where people feel the absolute necessity to achieve their work more quickly and better because they are threatened by the risk of revelation; our findings show that this threat is not always experienced negatively: it produces excitement and hyper-cohesiveness and pushes people to intensify their interactions.

Our findings show that scientists often describe their experience of secrecy as being in a ‘state of exception’ within the company. This involves the suspension of usual forms of conduct and eliminating the normal forces of control, thus creating a space between regular functioning and complete transgression of organizational rules. Secrecy creates a parallel world, in Simmel’s words, where actions and conducts are de facto regulated by actors sharing the secret, rather than by the usual channels of management which create what we referred to as a state of exception. We adapt this notion by arguing that the state of exception does not generate a space without norms, but rather that norms are created from within which serve the purpose of the secret group and impose a ‘disciplinary influence’ on members (Simmel, 1906, p. 473). Therefore, secrecy allows members to ‘uphold a second world in which they feel in control, and perhaps more authentically themselves in contrast to the first world in which they are being controlled’ (Costas & Grey, 2016, p. 102). The awareness of working in exceptional conditions seems to create a heightened sense of responsibility toward the achievement of the project: a state of exception is thus assimilated by team members to a state of emergency, where energies, forces of cohesion and forces of creation converge to protect a group and to find solutions to external threats. In other words, the secret allows members to develop exceptional interactions, exceptional in the sense of intensity, frequency and responsibility. This combination of mechanisms generates what is often expressed by our informants as an obligation to succeed, to be better and more efficient. This largely explains, we argue, the linkages between secrecy and creativity that we explain in the next section.

Linking secrecy and creativity through a collective interactionist perspective

We argue that there are two major problems with research striving to link creativity and secrecy. First, such research is mostly individualistic or structural in the sense that it accounts for environmental and social factors without studying the concrete mechanisms through which these factors enable creativity. For instance, many studies are based on Amabile’s (1996) assumptions considering that creativity is partly generated by social factors, while also inscribed in an individual cognitive process that can be influenced by managerial initiatives. Most creative tasks are seen as based on individual engagement (Simonton, 1997), or sustained by organizational conditions that encourage individual creativity (Elsbach & Hargadon, 2006). A similar problem affects literature on secrecy and creativity: the link between both phenomena is established, but the interactional mechanisms that explain how secrecy enables or facilitates creativity are largely unknown. Second, most research on creativity and secrecy conveys a vision of secret-keeping as an oppositional and potentially dangerous dissenting activity, as a deviant practice (Mainemelis, 2010); secrecy is also often regarded as suspicious because it is equated with intentional concealment, deception and falsification (Bail, 2015; Birchall, 2011; Hoerl & Ortiz, 2015; Simmel, 1906). Some even contend that ‘having secrets is already proof of criminal and immoral political activities’ (Horn, 2011, p. 119). Although Simmel himself cautions against an exclusive ethical standpoint when approaching secrecy, saying, ‘Secrecy is a universal sociological form, which, as such, has nothing to do with the moral valuations of its contents’ (Simmel, 1906, p. 463), most research tends to overestimate the oppositional dimension of creative initiatives ‘from below’ and to underestimate the company-committed ethos that secretive work can involve.

Our findings show, first, that secrecy is not necessarily an oppositional and dangerous process for the organization. The scientists’ decision to continue to believe in the potential of their idea could be interpreted as the effort of a group unaware of any business target, egoistically focused on the validity of its idea. In contrast, our results strongly suggest that secrecy can be a company-committed practice of cooperation, which supposes that secret-holders are acting according to an ethos of positive contribution to both their own occupational objectives and to their company’s value. Research has already demonstrated the power of collective work in contexts of dissent for introducing novelty (Hjorth, 2005), as well as how interactions influence the generation of novel practices in specific contexts of work (Bouty & Gomez, 2105). Further, it has highlighted the importance of considering creativity as producing both novelty and usefulness (George, 2007). Our findings complement these results by highlighting that despite their actual disobedience, the scientists felt utterly responsible to succeed in their project, not only for themselves but also because they believed that the project was an asset for the organization; their creative endeavour was therefore driven by usefulness. They showed a highly ethical engagement towards the organization by linking themselves strongly to their secret along with their capacity to achieve something exceptional for the company. As such, secrets are to be considered as much acts of creation as acts of deception. Although creativity has been theorized as ‘deviance’ (Mainemelis, 2010) or bootlegging (Augsdorfer, 2005; Cerne et al., 2013), we show that the intention of actors is not to change the managerial system or to influence organizational outputs. To the contrary, the intention of our scientists was to show that things that do fit organizational goals are possible to attain through alternative procedures.

Second, the connection between secrecy and creativity can be explained by the analysis of secrecy as a collective social practice whereby actors can be actively hidden so as to freely develop their interactions and the content of their work. Hargadon and Bechky (2006) have already investigated creativity as an interactive activity emerging not only from single gifted individuals, but also from interactions of a plurality of actors in the creative process. They show that social interactions are developed along the process by help-seeking, help-giving, reflective reframing and reinforcing. However, overall, research has largely neglected the complexities of creativity as a social process. Bouty and Gomez (2015) wonder how creative work is actually carried out, including the material, spatial and temporal entanglements of creative work within a specific context. We contribute to this questioning by showing that secret forms of work and cooperation, being catalysts for collective interactions, allow actors to be more creative, because actors can choose when and where to discuss and intensify exchanges and cooperation, for instance when they need to find a specific solution to a specific problem. Creativity fundamentally derives from these everyday problem-solving moments, which are more frequent in situations of secrecy when people have constructed spaces where they can freely cooperate according to their own norms of exchange and relationships among ‘equals’, without relying on preconceived managerial procedures.

Our results also suggest that most everyday interactions occur at two occasions. First, the creative potential of the team is triggered by its collective decision to begin a secretive working process in order to do things differently. This is a very significant decision for the group of scientists. The decision is not triggered by the specific individual qualities of a champion, or by individual sources of leadership (Simonton, 1997), or by a series of managerial enhancements (Mainemelis, 2010); it is taken after several meetings in a private place where people will freely discuss their chances of being successful and, even more importantly, where they will check the solidity of their cohesiveness: Is everyone ready to take the risk of working in secret on a project that management seems to plan to abandon? More particularly, our findings highlight the possibility that creativity might be catalysed by an initial, shared collective feeling of the absolute necessity to find a solution to a problem that for the group is too important to be neglected. In other words, creativity in that instance comes from a collective perception of what is meaningful for the group rather than from a managerial view on the priorities of the scientific agenda.

Second, everyday interactions are triggered and multiplied by a collective feeling of vulnerability that evolves over time. From the moment people are aware that they are working in illegal conditions (according to the managerial rule), they need to share their anxiety and find support in everyday conversations about the work and their emotions. This shared feeling generates a common view about the necessary success of the collective effort: being creative becomes a way to cope with the threat of revelation, which in turn explains the process of intensification of interactions that characterized the last months of the secret working process. This intensification tends to generate more ideas not only by working more on the topic at hand, but also by discussing a variety of issues, including private ones, to demonstrate that they care about each other’s feelings and experiences. This suggests that each individual has to become a more creative scientist both for his or her own safeguard, and for the collective enterprise of the group and of the company. The findings show an interesting dialectic of creative activities: task-oriented interactions and enjoyment-oriented interactions are constantly combined and contribute to help the group to utilize the ‘cracks in the surveillance of the proprietary powers … creating surprises in those cracks’ (de Certeau, 1984; Hjorth, 2005, p. 391; Courpasson, Dany, & Martí, 2016), which grant actors the capacity to find solutions that would convince outsiders that the molecule needs to be kept on the agenda of the company.

The physical dimension of creative interactions

The intensification of everyday interactions around work issues also suggests that creativity is related to the collective excitement of working in secret. Indeed, the secret in our study provided moments of high excitement, encouraging intense participation when members felt ‘caught up’ in the moral and affective dimensions of the process (Fine & Van den Scott, 2011). An important payoff in terms of theory is that our research expands the Durkheimian theory of social solidarity and how it relates to the social construction of creativity. Durkheim’s idea of solidarity as ‘the universal concomitant of group action’ strongly suggests that solidarity, while being the ‘sine qua non of collective action’ (Traugott, 1984), is related to the physical density of interactions. For instance, Traugott points out that Durkheim sees solidarity as characterized by ‘intensification of … integrative bonds’ (p. 325). According to this view, the density of emotional ties would explain engagement in secret work, all the more as these ties are based on physical co-presence in diverse places. As Emirbayer points out, ‘Enhanced levels of the physical density of interaction, together with the increasing ecological boundedness of a given group, raise its focus of attention and the intensity of common emotions’ (1996, p. 119). According to Durkheim, ‘once the individuals are gathered together, a sort of electricity is generated from their closeness and quickly launches them to an extraordinary height of exaltation’ (1995, p. 217). This is what he calls ‘collective effervescence’, a phenomenon that shows that emotional dimensions of a group’s life are transpersonal and relational, and can explain the creative power of the group. A ‘collective thought’ is indeed possible, according to Durkheim, ‘only through the coming together of individuals…through the collaboration of individual wills and sensibilities’ (1995, p. 447). We contend that this theory helps us understand processes of creativity. It shows that creativity can arise out of energy-enhancing interactions within a given relational space, through carrying symbols that have a high emotional charge for members as, in our case, the threat of revelation, or the awareness of working in exceptional circumstances.

Managerial openings

Our case shows that secrecy can be beneficial to organizations in two ways. First, it allows actors with fewer resources to influence the decisions of the firm without overtly clashing with other actors. From a managerial point of view, this allows for the gradual introduction of novel ideas, which is less costly for the organization (Mainemelis, 2010) as long as it accepts the dissenting flavour of secret creative work from below (Hjorth, 2016). Second, the dynamics that secrecy necessitates produce tight cohesion as well as a friendly atmosphere that allows for open exchanges among actors of different ranks in a team, and thereby liberates new ideas. Indeed, today, diverse organizations are targeting release of rules to explore new ideas. These can include inviting artists to interact with employees and make them think in a different way (Hjorth, 2005) or collective brainstorming (Hargadon & Bechky, 2006).

We highlight how company-committed secrecy can encourage occupational members to be creative; that is to say, creativity can be developed through resisting a managerial decision by actively playing the game of power and by seeing managerial structures and constraints as opportunities to be turned to the employees’ advantage rather than as insurmountable obstacles. Through their intimate understanding of the game of power, they can appropriate rules, roles and discourses, as well as certain hierarchical principles and spaces. Occupations can develop dissenting and even illegal initiatives because they disagree with the way company management deals with problems: but these actions are generated for the company because they rely on the shared structure of the company and on its cultural features so as to make secrecy an act of productive conformity, that is, to do eventually what is expected of them as scientists: develop an innovative idea. Our study shows an occupational group working out processes of ‘agencing’ (Cochoy, 2014) resources and subsequently producing agency through the panoply of acts and initiatives that they are expected to use to solve their specific problems. Corporate managers would be well advised not to underestimate the productive quality of occupational autonomy, but rather to see organizational creativity as coming from the chosen cohesiveness among employees rather than from supposedly more appropriate individuals or settings developed for enhancing creativity; moreover, it is important for management to understand that certain illegal collective behaviours, like secrets, are not to be catalogued as ‘resistance to change’ but as alternative routes to organizational creativity, that can accelerate movement and act as a ‘tactical art of making the new organization necessary’ (Hjorth, 2016, p. 305).