Terrorist organizations are both imitative and innovative in character. While the drivers of imitation have been extensively modeled using concepts such as contagion and diffusion, creativity and innovation remain relatively underdeveloped ideas in the context of terrorist behavior. This article seeks to redress this deficiency by presenting a conceptual framework with which we can understand the complex nature and multiple drivers of creativity and innovation within terrorist organizations. The overriding questions we address are: what factors spark creativity and innovation within terrorist organizations, and are there particular organizational traits that increase an organization's propensity to be creative and innovative? Using insights from industrial and organizational psychology and aided by illustrative examples and case studies from the history of terrorism, we aim to show that the multiple drivers of creativity and innovation are identifiable. By providing a conceptual framework that explores these key issues, we suggest that a much clearer research agenda for these issues may emerge. We conclude with a discussion concerning how our framework can help inform counter-terrorism practices.Keywords: creativity, malevolent, terrorism, innovation.Terrorist organizations are both imitative and innovative in character. Organizations espousing vastly different ideologies and goals frequently replicate a perceived successful tactical or technological innovation established by another organization. This process has been extensively modeled using concepts such as contagion (Bloom, 2005;Dugan, LaFree, & Piquero, 2005;Midlarsky, Crenshaw, & Yoshida, 1980;Moghadam, 2008) and diffusion (Bonneuil & Auriat, 2000;Braithwaite & Li, 2007;Horowitz, 2010). However, careful examination of creativity and innovation within the context of terrorism still remain underdeveloped with notable exceptions from Jackson et al. (2005), Dolnik (2007), and Rasmussen and Hafez (2010). This article seeks to redress this deficiency by presenting a conceptual framework to aid in understanding the complex nature and multiple drivers of creativity and innovation within terrorist organizations. The overriding questions that guide our analysis are: what factors spark creativity and innovation within terrorist organizations and are there particular organizational traits that increase a terrorist organization's propensity to be creative and innovative? Using insights from social, cognitive, industrial/organizational, educational psychologies and the broader organizational behavior literature, applied to illustrative examples from the history of terrorism, we aim to show that although it is nearly impossible to predict the precise onset of specific innovations within terrorist organizations, given the correct information, it may be possible to predict a terrorist organization's capacity for creativity. Our focus therefore is concerned with the process, behaviors, and organizational capabilities that precede the onset of a terrorist innovation...
