A Qualitative Study on Postgraduate Social Entrepreneurship Students’ Experiences with and Perceptions of AI-Augmented Creativity in Sustainable Startup Development

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly integrated into sustainability-oriented entrepreneurial practices, raising important questions about its role in shaping human creativity and innovation. This qualitative study examines how postgraduate social entrepreneurship students engage with generative AI during the creativity phase of sustainable startup development. Drawing on Amabile’s componential theory of creativity, this study explores how AI is perceived to relate to domain-relevant skills, creativity-relevant processes, task motivation, and social–contextual factors. Data were collected through an AI-assisted ideation task, followed by semi-structured interviews, and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings reveal that generative AI was perceived as supporting information access and associative thinking, while being unable to replicate human intuition and the “aha” moment associated with deep creativity. Moreover, AI was perceived to have limited influence on intrinsic motivation, which remains driven by personal values and contextual responsibility. Socially, AI was consistently described as a tool rather than a teammate, with emotional responses regarded as superficial. The study further suggests that AI may be understood as a social–contextual condition and highlights a perceived trade-off between efficiency and creativity in AI-assisted ideation. These insights extend the application of creativity theory to AI-supported sustainability contexts and offer practical implications for fostering responsible, human-centered innovation in entrepreneurship education.