Idiographic explanatory phenomenology: a contextualist approach to elucidating experiences

This paper introduces Idiographic Explanatory Phenomenology (IEP) as viable research approach to collect and analyse rich qualitative data on experiences. Drawing on the example of a study elucidating experiences of personal creativity of 18 world-class chefs, the key contribution of this paper is to make explicit the data collection and analysis procedure in order to demonstrate researchers how IEP can be applied in any research aiming to elucidate lived experiences. IEP is a contextualist approach and found particularly suitable for researching highly context-dependent cognitive and nebulous phenomena such as personal creativity. The latter is a precondition to innovation and perhaps the most vital aspect for the sustainable competitive advantage of firms but yet also the most under-explored area of innovation management research. Attaining better understanding of the phenomenon requires both personal creativity and the socio-cultural system that evaluates the innovative qualities of personal creativity to be addressed.