How Chinese SMEs innovate with a ‘diegetic innovation templating’? - the stimulating role of Sci-fi and fantasy

Use of established fiction provides a connection to society at large, tapping into the creative abilities of great authors and filmmakers, which can offer a valuable source of creative ideas. This paper explores how science fiction and fantasy, particularly in the form of films, is being used to stimulate creativity and produce innovation outputs in non-science SMEs in China. We argue that fiction has the potential to inspire innovation through a constructive organisational process, we provide a simple metric, the ‘Diegetic Gap’, as a means for illustrating this. In particular, we present four empirical case studies that explore the application of science fiction and fantasy to product and process innovation, utilising a concept we call a Diegetic Innovation Template to merge fictional narrative and tangible innovation output.