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Editorial Explorations of the new is the central theme of this issue’s special section, in which guest editors Christian De Cock (Swansea University, UK) and Alf Rehn (Abo Akademi University, Finland and Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden) brought together a total of seven contributions, which will be highlighted and introduced to you further below. In addition, we have three contributions spanning contemporal issues related to creativity and innovation management.
On Novelty, and Being Novel Innovation and creativity, as spheres of academic inquiry, have been a source of fascination in management studies throughout the history of the field and have enjoyed a renewed and intensifying popularity in recent years. The lure of the new and the inherent creativity in the destruction of the old seem to be endlessly mesmerizing. Areas of study such as innovation management, entrepreneurship and new product development all have this affinity for the new as their stock in trade, and thus innumerable articles and books have been written about new products, new services, new ventures, new organizational forms, and even the ‘new economy’. Still, there is a specific issue in all this that has received remarkably little attention, and this is precisely the very category of ‘the new’. Although we are conditioned to accept novelty at face value, as fait accompli, key questions about the new – What is it? How can we know it? How does it come to be? – still remain. And as long as the conditions under which we can use the word ‘new’ are seen as self-evident, the philosophical problem of how something can be truly new, essentially different (or perhaps not), has not been adequately addressed . . . By critically engaging with a concept that has been taken for granted, become part of the furniture so to speak, we feel that one can both develop theory and find original perspectives for empirical studies. This is the challenge we put forward in our ‘call for papers’ almost two years ago. Given the inherently open nature of this call (we certainly did not want to impose any pre© 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
conceptions on the contributors, the only expectation being that they should consider the idea of ‘the new’ in a new light) and given the fact that no conference nor workshop was attached to this call, we were pleased to receive 15 good quality papers. These initial submissions were eventually whittled down to seven through an at times difficult reviewing process (it is never pleasant to inform authors their piece does not quite fit the bill). Rather fittingly, a series of novel and often surprising themes thus emerged, a form of processual re-invention of this special issue. To our own surprise, a strong Deleuzian theme materialized throughout the contributions – perhaps our century is destined to be Deleuzian after all, as Michel Foucault famously suggested? Three papers engage directly and productively with the thinking of this French philosopher, thus offering Creativity and Innovation Management readers a good introduction to a thinker who has become increasingly influential in a variety of academic fields. Emma Jeanes neatly encapsulates the aim of these papers in her article: ‘. . . we adopt the writing of Gilles Deleuze to reexamine what we mean by creativity, to question its role and impact, to question the current mode of thinking, and to add a new perspective and impetus to the important minority who challenge “creativity” and “innovation” as it is currently presented’. What Jeanes objects to is the fact that our being creative has become prescribed, both ‘substantively and instrumentally’, rather than existing as a form of freedom. Bent Meier Sørensen urges us to step away from a view of creativity and innovation ‘as either a god-given gift that muses (i.e. highly paid “process consultants”) should bring about, or as a substance to be managed technocratically’. Instead he proposes we reevaluate the notions of ‘event’, ‘crisis’, and ‘work’ – ‘any transformation is contingent on work’. He references an earlier paper of Alexander Styhre, who in his CIM piece (just like Emma Jeanes does in hers) elaborates on the notion of ‘work’: ‘creative thinking is a byproduct of work within a particular domain of thinking rather than a precursor’. In linking the work of Deleuze with that of William James, Styhre advocates a radical empiricist
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approach to the study of creativity and innovation, which he suggests can help us move beyond the canon of received conceptual schemes that may in fact hinder novel ideas and new images of thought. Styhre and Jeanes both pay particular attention to the ‘social costs and consequences of creativity’ – Jeanes in putting creativity within a broader capitalist dimension; Styhre by seeing creativity ‘as being part of a broader political economy of innovation including the traditional tradeoffs, negotiations, and political games’. To illustrate his point, Styhre evaluates the development of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) in the domain of genomics. The PCR breakthrough is ‘very much composed of a variety of activities, actions, beliefs, ideas, technologies, material resources, conflicts, meetings, communication . . .’. These ‘activities and events’ include interpersonal conflicts and the failure of recognition, something which in a more traditional way of looking would be seen as detrimental to the process of creation. Sørensen also proffers an innovation ‘case study’, and a highly creative one at that. We certainly do not want to spoil a good story, perhaps just state its declared purpose: ‘Take the essence of an imagined future, turn it into a concept and present this concept in present day reality. Report the actions’. In this case study, Bent pays particular attention to the ‘often forgotten (normally repressed) functions of the body. For it is, I will argue, the transformation of the body that provides the locus of the innovative process’. Moving away from a direct engagement with Deleuze, the attention to the body is also a key pre-occupation of Natasha Slutskaya, who aims to ‘re-evaluate a number of dimensions in the relationship between the body and organization’. She offers an unusual analysis of modern dance to show how the human body can become the primary site of generating creative and innovative practices. Modern dance is an intriguing example precisely because of its inherently paradoxical nature: ‘it is known for its capacity to exceed, escape, defy, or threaten existing order, but also for requiring structure, training and discipline as a precondition’. In looking closely at such a ‘strange’ case, we readers acquire a new perspective on the balance between containment and freedom that is so often discussed in the innovation literature. Slutskaya pays particular attention to the notions of mimesis and repetition (thus elaborating a theme that both Styhre and Jeanes briefly touch upon) and detects in them a powerful positive and generative power of creation, much in contrast to traditional approaches, which view them in opposition to creativity an innovation. Light-
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foot, Lilley and Kavanagh offer in one important way a mirror paper to Slutskaya’s, whilst maintaining the same critical distance towards the received wisdom in the field. They explore how ‘the new, the strange, and the unfamiliar and the would-be shocking are rendered banal . . .’, merely prodding us ‘down the path leading to (gleeful) purchase’. Lightfoot, Lilley and Kavanagh examine the ‘shock advertising’ campaign of French Connection UK, perhaps shocking a few readers in the process. Surely, they must hold the record for using the F-word in 15 years of publishing Creativity and Innovation Management, one that is unlikely to be surpassed soon. Yet, underlying their playfulness lies a serious, almost melancholic, message: the ‘new is itself something of a brand, and an increasingly tired brand at that’. They flesh out their argument by turning to art theory, and in particular the history of the avant-garde. The parallel is not comforting. Throughout the twentieth century, and especially since the postwar period, we have witnessed a steady dismantling of the autonomous practices and spheres of culture, and a perpetual intensification of assimilation and homogenization, so that we are now faced with ‘the end of not art, but the end of the idea of the new in art’. A cautionary detail indeed. In the last two papers of the special issue, the C-word (Creativity, that is) firmly takes centre stage again. Whilst Lightfoot, Lilley and Kavanagh consider the new in advertising, Sophie Schweizer turns to the field of neuropsychology in building her model of the novelty generation process. In order to construct her Novelty Generation Model (NGM) she brings together research ‘at the borders of the organizational sciences, neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience’. She makes a clear distinction between the seeking for novelty, the finding of novelty and the innovative performance – ‘the social recognition that the producer of a novelty can receive in this world’. Schweizer then sketches out several work scenarios (such as creative staff selection, the composition of work teams, the management of addictive behaviours in the workplace . . .) in which the application of her model can be useful. In the last paper of this special issue, Reijo Miettinen similarly suggests we approach the understanding and management of creativity from a variety of disciplines – ‘psychology, sociology of science and technology, economic and sociological studies of innovations and history of technology’ – in order to build a systemic view. We come full circle here when, following Dewey, he echoes both Styhre’s and Sørensen’s papers in insisting on the importance of crisis, failure and contingency. Miettinen offers interesting © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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examples along the way: the open development model in software production and the, at the time (early 1980s), rather redundant specification of text messaging, which was added to mobile phones by Finnish engineers. He freely admits that his view of distributed creativity has no one-to-one application to management; rather it ‘requires following up on the scientific, technical and economic developments, as well as on the user activities of a domain’ and ‘the mobilization of heterogeneous cultural resources within domains and across boundaries of domains’. Such a ‘mobilization’ in all its heterogeneity is precisely what we offer you in this special issue on Explorations of the New. It remains for us to thank the general editors, Olaf Fisscher and Petra de WeerdNederhof, for giving us the chance to extend the scope of CAIM and present its readers with some unusual (dare we say ‘new’?) approaches, case studies and theories. We also extend our thanks to Klaasjan Visscher, who represented the editorial office for this special issue. Klaasjan tirelessly acted as a ‘third reviewer’ and ensured the very smooth interchange between everyone who had an editorial stake in this issue. Perhaps we should leave the last word to Gilles Deleuze, quite appropriately in an issue where so many authors were inspired by his words and ideas: You have to open up words, break things open, to free earth’s vectors. All writers, all creators, are shadows . . . Once you start writing, shadows are more substantial than bodies. Truth is producing existence. It’s not something in your head but something existing. Writers generate real bodies (Negotiations, pp. 133–134).
Additional Papers and CAIM News In the eighth article of this issue, the first of three not related to the special issue theme, Paul Hyland, Jane Marceau and Terry Sloan contribute an interesting paper on sources of innovation and ideas utilized by Australian ICT firms to sustain their competitive position through innovation. They report on a relatively small exploratory study examining the nature of interaction between RTOs and innovative ICT firms from the greater Sydney region, which has the greates concentration of ICT firms in Australia. The majority of the 45 responding firms saw themselves as innovative, and mostly used research and technology organizations or other publicly funded sources of information for help with ‘technical’ or trade issues. They still see their sales force, © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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customers and suppliers as the most important sources of innovation knowledge. Next, Martin Moehrle and Sven Wenzke address an important, but mainly neglected part of the problem-solving process: problem analysis. They describe the use of the function analysis instrument from the theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) as a tool for teams, addressing two main issues: (i) the need for an external moderator, and (ii) application with special software. The article reports on an experiment addressing these questions, with as an important result the remarkable learning effect: deeper and teambased problem explorations are made possible through the use of function analysis, which may lead to maturing problem solutions. As has become our practice, a case study is also included in this issue. Van Harten and Van Luenen describe the case of the Netherlands Cancer Institute in their article on quality management and stimulation of technology transfer in reseach institutes. The NKI (as it is abbreviated) has chosen a very ‘lean’approach towards the management of its research activities, with only a few formal management positions, a minimum of administrative procedures, and short and effective decision lines. The NKI has proven over the years to be both productive and creative and the case study gives detailed insights in how this is achieved. At the very end of this editorial, before you go over to reading, and as is our expectation, enjoying this very special issue, we would like to draw your attention briefly to some innovations of our own, regarding new electronic services of Creativity and Innovation Management and Blackwells. First of all, through the website you may have already noticed the new Online Early system, which will from now on include all electronic versions of the papers from our upcoming issues as soon as they become available, so well before the actual hardcopy publication date. Furthermore, as of March 2006, we started using Manuscript Central for manuscript submission. Details can be obtained from Jeannette Visser-Groeneveld, who can also guide you through the submission steps (via the Journals website) if necessary. We expect high efficiency gains from this system and also a better service to our authors, which is enhanced with a third new electronic feature, Blackwell Publishing’s new Author Services system. Now, all CAIM articles received for production can be tracked online by the corresponding author. For more information on all of these features, please visit our website. Last but not least, some brief information on CAIM activities. After our successsful 2005
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Oxford meeting, we will continue to have CAIM supported or related activities every year. In 2005, we support the organization of the Taiwan R&D management Conference on Creativity and R&D, organized by two members of our editorial board, Jon Chao Hong and Ming Huei-Chen (see http:// www.radma.org) for the link to the website. In 2007 we can look forward to EACIs 10th ECCI (see http://www.eaci.net) with Henry Chesbrough as one of the keynote speakers, and in 2008 we are very glad to be able to announce that Gerard Puccio and his team in Buffalo have agreed to organize a CAIM Community event in the United States (more details and a preliminary call will follow by the end of this year). Your CAIM editors will also be at this year’s PDMA Annual International Confer-
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ence in Atlanta (21–25 October) to strengthen the ties with this newly affiliated association, and at the CINet conference in Lucca (http:// www.continuous-innovation.net). At the time of writing this editorial we are finalizing an agreement for affiliation with CINet, about which we will report in more detail in one of our next issues. Lastly, we support the European Doctoral Summerschool, this year to be organized in Vaasa (see also http:// www.eiasm.be). We look forward to the September issue, which will include a special section on creative industries! March 2005 Alf Rehn Christian De Cock Petra De Weerd-Nederhof
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‘Resisting Creativity, Creating the New’. A Deleuzian Perspective on Creativity Emma L. Jeanes Create/Innovate or die. This is the taken-for-granted ‘truth’ in the social, political and economic context in which we currently live. In fact, so accepted is this mantra that criticism seems foolish; mere evidence of the entrenched conservatism that needs to be challenged. This article posits an alternative view of creativity, drawing in particular on the thinking of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze. The writing of Deleuze is used to explore our understanding of creativity, in terms of what ‘creativity’ is (and what it is not), and the destructive (and sometimes pointless) nature of creativity. In doing so it is hoped that this article challenges clichéd representations of ‘creativity’, the typical ‘creativity is wonderful and we need a lot more of it . . .’ type arguments and assist scholars to become more creative (or at least more reflective) in their own practice.
Introduction he purpose of this article is, to borrow a phrase, ‘to make the familiar seem strange’; in particular, to problematize the moral crusade that seems to be waged on account of the constructs of ‘creativity and innovation’, a crusade that has remained largely unchallenged. Its aim is to expose a range of clichés and ready-made representations we find in the literature on creativity and innovation management, and force scholars in the field to engage in a deeper exploration of the implications of the ‘creative process’. In proceeding thus, a connection between the field of creativity and innovation and certain writings in philosophy and social theory are relied upon, in particular those of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Given the emphasis on ‘process’ and ‘flow’ in recent years (e.g. Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; Drazin, Glynn & Kazanjian, 1999; Mauzy & Harriman, 2003) it seems somewhat surprising that creativity studies have largely ignored a body of work that has continued to expand in importance and impact in recent years, not least in the field of management and organization theory. This absence is all the more puzzling since the notion of creativity, and indeed that of ‘creative organization’ (Hardt,
T
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1993, p. 20), plays such a central role in the Deleuzian oeuvre.
The Creative Mantra The discourse of creativity is rife within society (Thrift, 2002), with the necessity for creativity (and innovation) now seemingly elevated above many other aspects of traditional management discourse. This ‘creative imperative’ can be seen alongside developments in (primarily information) technology that enable ever-intensifying change. Contemporary business not only has to change, but change rapidly and perpetually – with today’s success very much tomorrow’s history. Pick up any text on management and you can hardly fail to notice the apparent importance of creativity and innovation to an organisation. In fact, so typical are these statements that we take them for granted, assume they are unquestionably ‘right’. Critics of the ‘innovate or die’ argument remain a minority voice at the edge of management discourse and have a tendency to call for a new approach to innovation: a new mantra. Getz and Robinson (2003) for example, argue that the drive for innovation fails to take account of the importance of doing other things (that are already in
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place) well; that it fails to take into account the reality of successful innovation, and high failure rates. They make sensible observations, but also implicitly acknowledge the importance of innovation (if companies are buyingin innovation, someone must be innovating) and tend towards a prescriptive approach (arguing that getting the ‘right’ combination of skills to innovate may be rare and difficult still implies there is a recipe for innovative behaviour). Indeed they conclude with the thoughts that real innovation results from progress and excellence: that customer-focused processes and basic continuous improvement play a far more important role (Getz & Robinson, 2003, p. 133) and front-line staff are key to this process, as the people with ideas that relate to real problems and opportunities facing the company. Not only is the discourse of creativity familiar, it is instantly recognizable: we know the language of creativity; we know how to identify and classify creativity; we are told how to be creative; and sometimes we are even asked ‘what do you want to create?’. In Foucauldian terms creativity has become ‘normalized’; our understanding has become framed by the language of creativity, our ‘being creative’ prescribed both substantively and instrumentally. The literature (and language) of creativity is, of course, evolving. We are re-classifying, finding new methods, working on our understanding of the ‘essence’ of creativity. Creativity has become the modern mantra. We have creative industries, creative partnerships and creative approaches of which individuals, businesses and even governments are trying to harness the potential. Creativity is seen as essential for our survival, economically and socially. Yet fundamentally, and significantly, the argument presented here is that we have become uncreative through this very process. In making creativity the current orthodoxy, and by focusing on the provision of an ontological basis for creativity (what is it?), we are actually subverting the true process of creativity. This article adopts the writing of Gilles Deleuze to re-examine what we mean by ‘creativity’, to question its role and impact, to question the current mode of thinking, and to add a new perspective and impetus to the important minority who challenge ‘creativity’ and ‘innovation’ as currently represented. By its very nature, Deleuze’s work does not offer prescriptions as to ‘how to be creative’, however it does offer us a perspective, which should at least, in practical terms, present us with a mode of reflection on our desire for, and means to becoming, creative. In doing so it
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rejects any heroic image of creativity (instead, balancing the positive force of creativity with its destructive side) and moves us away from trying to capture the ‘how-to-be’ creative processes and the ‘eureka’ moment of creating the new, but instead forces us to appreciate the more humble processes of thinking and working at problems and creating new ways of seeing and responding to these problems: the creation of new concepts.
What Is Creativity? (A Deleuzian Perspective) Deleuze explores creativity as an intellectual activity, with particular reference to philosophy (although also the arts and to a lesser degree the sciences) and the creation of concepts. Deleuze argues that philosophers should not reflect on things: ideas that already exist; and that mere representation (and exploration) of these ideas imposes rules on our thinking and is inherently limiting (Deleuze, 1994, p. 135). Instead Deleuze believes that what (good) philosophers actually do is create, by generating new concepts: ‘To think is to create – there is no other creation – but to create is first of all to engender “thinking” in thought’ (Deleuze, 1994, p. 147). His concern is to open us up to new powers of thinking, and what he termed its ‘power of becoming’. Essentially this is a ‘creative’ thinking – one that is free from established ideas and ways of thinking, albeit constrained and transformed by the context in which we think. Deleuze looks to a form of thinking that strives for ‘production, mutation and creation . . . we do philosophy to expand thought to its infinite potential’ (Colebrook, 2002, p. 15). This process of ‘becoming’ – the what might/could be – the creation of what is not yet, is achieved through thinking in new, perhaps previously unimagined, modes of thinking – what he sees as the key to maximizing the potential of life. He describes this as thinking in the virtual. The concept enables us to move beyond that which we know and experience and think how this might be extended. It provokes us, dislodges us from our ways of thinking. It creates whole new lines of thinking; new possibilities. This is thinking that reforms itself over and over again, eternally; thinking that is not defined by an image it creates of itself, a mode of thinking that is new (Colebrook, 2002): Thinking is always experiencing, experimenting, not interpreting but experimenting, and what we experience, experiment with, is always actuality, what’s coming into being, what’s new, what’s taking shape (Deleuze, 1995, p. 106). © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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Such a ‘thinking’ is inherently destabilizing as it takes us away from what we know, what we recognise as ‘good practice’ in creative thinking, and ask us to think about how we think. Deleuze argues that what is typically ignored is the power of the ‘virtual’ in favour of a focus on the actual world. The virtual power of becoming is one of potentiality – what has not yet unfolded. Life, for Deleuze, is a virtual power – a power to become in unforeseen ways and as fully real as the actual (Colebrook, 2002, p. 96). The actual world is limited in its future possibilities by what is already given: the actual world evolves through the unfolding of given possibilities towards a given end. We are working with known ideas, and thinking in the same way, so the outcome of our thinking is almost predictable. In the virtual world, however, there is the power to ‘become’ – to create – in unforeseen ways, unlimited by the actual world because we are no longer working within those terms of reference. In terms of the discourse of creativity this means thinking, being creative, in new ways and not in ways prescribed and recognized by our current understanding of creativity. The problem with our current way of thinking is it is a process of the realization of ideas. The process of realization is guided by resemblance, since we are working with known ideas and ways of thinking, and limitation, since not all possibilities can be realized. However, for the virtual to become actual it must create its own terms of actualization; with no pre-formed order this is a process of genuine creative evolution (Hardt, 1993). It is the process of something new – something previously unknown – becoming actualized. Central to this process of thinking differently is the ability to think beyond transcendent ways of thinking and seeing; to think beyond our current conceptualizations of creativity: in particular the language of creativity and creative practices – what we already ‘know’. It appears as something we can reveal or interpret (we can recognize the creative act and attempt to explain it). For Deleuze, transcendence is ultimately an illusion, the transcendent image (the way in which creativity is conceptualized) is merely an invention.1 To remain enslaved by transcendent modes of thinking means we have stopped thinking: If we allow thought to accept some transcendent foundation – such as reason, God, truth or human nature – then we have 1
Paradoxically, this exhibits the power of the inventive process – that thinking can be so powerful as to enslave itself to images of a transcendent ‘outside’ (Colebrook, 2002, p. 71). © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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stopped thinking. (Smith, 2003, p. 79; see also Nietzsche, 1976, p. 451) Working within the creative narrative effectively limits us to merely replicate, or think (or create) within these linguistic boundaries. Our ability to create the ‘new’ is limited by what we already know. Essentially the pre-given importance of creativity, and ways in which we think about creativity, actually prevents us from being truly creative. What we need to do is break-out of these transcendent modes of thinking: to try and ‘deterritorialize’ creative thinking from its current conceptions and free the possibility from its origins. Remaining territorialized within our current conceptions of creativity naturally limits future possibilities to what is already given, to the constraints of the ordering of language: In Deleuze’s view, language is charged with power relations. The object of language is not communication, but the inculcation of mots d’ordre-‘slogans,’ ‘watchwords,’ but also literally ‘words of order,’ the dominant, orthodox ways of classifying, organizing, and explaining the world. (Bogue, 2004, p. 71) The question, therefore, is how to avoid this grounding of our thinking that would otherwise prevent us from thinking creatively. The very fact of ‘thinking’ having a form means that it is already conforming with a model taken from somewhere – such as the state, the market – but no longer identified with its origin: it is seen as a natural phenomenon (Buchanan, 2000, p. 75). Deleuze’s concept of ‘nomadism’ appears a logical extension of this critique: a form of thought that owes nothing to established models, nor engages with them. The nomadic thinker is one who is free to create new connections, open up experience to new ‘becomings’, in short – to think differently. As a consequence, it may appear that Deleuze suggests a nomadic existence rather than a sedentary one: one that is fixed to certain ‘ways of thinking’, but his real point is that there are always new ways of thinking, and that ‘our’ conception of philosophy (or creativity) is not the only one (Buchanan, 2000, p. 74). Deleuze is not driven by a desire to propose a way of thinking – one true answer (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994). Deleuze and Guattari (1986) related the ‘nomad’ to ‘minor science’. The alternative of reproductive science or ‘Royal Science’ – the dominant way of thinking and understanding – is, for Deleuze, inherently uncreative in that the supposedly ‘creative’ processes are captured. Under Royal Science, the modes of thinking are known, often
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explicitly specified and expected of those working within the scientific tradition. With Royal Science the process of thinking, of creativity, is institutionalized: scientists are socialized into these ways of thinking. This results in a proliferation of imitation, and a limitation to what can be created, for all the possibilities have to emerge from the limited givens and through the limited procedures possible; in essence the Royal Science knows how things are to be done, and what the possible answers can be. By articulating a minor science, Deleuze is proposing an ‘untimely’ approach to science – that is a science acting counter to its time, by thinking outside these limits, and hopefully in a manner for the benefit of a time to come. Perhaps Deleuze’s most utopian idea is that one can think differently. It is not the point of origin of thought, nor the content of thought that matters, but that the way of thinking can be new or distinct (Buchanan, 2000). Nor does Deleuze propose a particular form of new thinking, but rather a ‘polyphonic’ (see Bakhtin, 1984) form of philosophy: an ‘assemblage’ of forms of thinking (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Deleuze enables us to see the possibility of creating a fresh way of thinking; and one that is entirely practical rather than theoretical; and one that is political (Deleuze & Guattari, 1977; see also Patton, 2000), as we shall now explore.
Deleuze, Creativity and Capitalism When we talk about creativity we do so essentially within the context of capitalism. The creative process, and its importance, is connected with the economy; we measure creative success in capitalist terms. Deleuze’s work is inherently interested in the capitalist system. The ‘untimely’ (Deleuze, 1990, p. 265) nature of his philosophy was in part the destruction of the precept of capitalism, a dogma of Western thought. We can deterritorialize, to some extent, but ultimately this deterritorialization is limited by the retention of the unit of capital: our imagining of all possible beings – or deterritorializations – is measured through the unit of capital and thus only relative deterritorialization of capitalism is possible. Newly created concepts are seen as ‘things’ to be sold or exchanged; all our imaginings of becomings are measured through capital units. For Deleuze this has both positive and negative aspects (Colebrook, 2002, p. 65). A positive perspective can be seen by the deterritorialization possible by this system of exchange – any aspect of life can be opened up to exchange and interaction. However, this deterritorializa-
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tion relies on an initial territorialization – that of capital – which creates the tendency for quantification of all exchange, even the value of concepts. Here, the becoming does not fully deterritorialize; it does not fully escape its original territory. Even creativity (in the form of ‘creative’ knowledge) is increasingly valued as a commodity in this economy. Deleuze is not so much anti-capitalist, as desiring an expansion of possibilities beyond the limits of capital. Indeed rebelling against capitalism creates its own problems: by projecting an opposing set of ideas one conforms to a new form of thinking, a new territory. In much of current creativity discourse there seems to be this assumption of truth – the truth that is the value of ‘creativity’; the compulsion for ‘creativity’. The desire for creation, as typified by much of the creativity literature and management discourse, talks about ‘frame breaking’ and ‘changing the domain’ in which it works, but in reality this ‘creativity’ is no different from Deleuze’s Royal Science – it is, in a manner of speaking, a creativity captured by capitalism and its language of creativity. Here the notion of creativity is limited to that of reproduction; working within and from a plane of thinking that grounds (and thus limits) our thinking with the territory of capital. Creativity is treated as a ‘something,’ as a value in itself (Thrift, 2000, p. 676). Furthermore, the processes of ‘creativity’ are thought to be understood; they are ‘captured’ and taught. In effect we are seeing an engineering of the creative process; one that is repeated for its own sake. And in this process of fixing creativity – of territorializing creativity – we are losing the very ability to be truly creative: Any such moral or rationalistic avowal (of creativity) runs the risk of turning the value of creativity into something like ‘fashion’, the endless repetition of permanent change under conditions of permanent imitation – production for the sake of production, ‘ideas’ for the sake of ideas – and something which ultimately, perhaps precisely because of its character as a sort of compulsory heterodoxy, has conservative effects. (Osborne, 2003, p. 512) In essence we have over-romanticized the notion of ‘creativity’ in capitalist society and have constructed creativity as a capitalist creation. Creative thinking has become a ‘timely’ thinking (thinking ‘of its time’ and recognized as such), and therefore almost ‘un-thinking’. It is also limited, in a very uncreative manner, to our current perceptions of what creativity is, and how we can be creative. Furthermore, creativity is valued by and captured within the territory of capital. In an effort to ‘un© 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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romanticize’ creativity we now turn to explore the ‘darker’ side of the creative process.
Creativity as Destruction It is extraordinary that citizens of the contemporary West could imagine that overlooking the changeability of things is one of our greatest perils. On the contrary, there is far too much change around, not too little. Whole ways of life are wiped out almost overnight. Men and women must scramble frantically to acquire new skills or be thrown on the scrapheap (Eagleton, 2004, p. 164). A particular feature of much of the creativity literature is the focus on creativity as something ‘fun’ and ‘enjoyable’ (e.g. Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, p. 108). Yet, it is useful to reflect on the ‘darker’ side of the creative process; to reconnect it with terms such as ‘destruction’ and ‘loss’. This aspect of creativity is perhaps best documented at the societal or market level, such as for example in Joseph Schumpeter’s ‘gales of creative destruction’.2 To put this in a Deleuzian vocabulary: Everywhere capitalism develops, it undermines traditional social codes – kinship systems, religious beliefs, class hierarchies, taboos, ritual trade relations and so on and releases uncoded fluxes of heterogeneous matter, ideas, affects, and fantasies. But . . . it constantly recodes fluxes and flows within new forms of social organization . . . in an effort to maintain a controlled and universal exchange of commodities (Bogue, 2004, p. 35). The creative forces involved here are clearly destructive. By limiting ourselves to thinking within the territory of capital, we judge creativity as a value, indeed a necessity, for society, but we are not sufficiently reflective on the negative, or pointless aspects of this process. As capitalism, in Western thought, is taken as a pre-given, then even if we judge the impacts of change, of creativity, to be harmful, we never question the need to change per se, as change is central to capitalism. It is important, therefore, to be reminded that change is in part 2
It is interesting to be reminded that Schumpeter’s (1942) prologue opened: ‘Can capitalism survive? No. I do not think it can’. Schumpeter believed that capitalism would be destroyed by its successes; that it would spawn a large intellectual class that made its living by attacking the very bourgeois system of private property and freedom so necessary for the existence of this intellectual class.
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a product of human agency; that much of the explosion of ‘creativity’ is as a direct result of the conscious efforts of individuals (Osborne, 2003) rather than an inevitable process. In reality, the change we experience is almost certainly a rather prosaic mixture of progress, in the positive sense of the word, and deterioration (Eagleton, 2004).
Creativity as Work These destructive (and positive) forces are not just evident at the level of society. Deleuze, in discussing Foucault and his development of conceptions such as discourse, knowledge and power, with reference to his book Madness and Civilisation comments: There’s something great writers often go through: they’re congratulated on a book, the book’s admired, but they aren’t themselves happy with it, because they know how far they still are from what they’re trying to do, what they’re seeking, of which they still have only an obscure idea. That’s why they’ve so little time to waste on polemics, objections, discussions. I think Foucault’s thought is a thought that didn’t evolve but went from one crisis to another. I don’t believe thinkers can avoid crises, they’re too seismic (Deleuze, 1995, p. 104) but goes on to add: ‘For Foucault it was a great period of energy and exhilaration, of creative gaiety’ (1995, p. 105). The key point here is the notion of creativity as a process of personal and perpetual crisis, of knowing that concepts are not ‘finished’, of knowing one has not succeeded, of being thrown back into the open sea. The artist, philosopher or scientist is working on the continually evolving, unfinished and ‘unfinishable’ project. This stands in contrast to our current image of creativity in which the creative process has outputs and outcomes; in which success is measured through the unit of capital. Artists provide a further useful point of exposition in exploring the creative process in the Deleuzian oeuvre. By trying to be creative, in a very conscious way, rather than merely working at some idea or problem, they are by that very act being uncreative. Successive generations of young artists in Britain, usually subsumed under the heading of ‘Brit Art’, have been trying to shock the nation with new forms of art – often exemplified in the annual Turner Prize competition, which seeks to showcase ‘innovative’ art. However, in their conscious desire to be creative, they have become increasingly clichéd, even passé, and demonstrate a reliance on imitation rather
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than genuinely new thinking. Their aim is to shock (again) in order to win the coveted prize, but this very prize (and the institution of the Turner Prize, its criterion of judgement) confer upon the art works a sense of reproduction: we know it is ‘innovative art’ because it meets our criteria of innovation – it fits our units of measurement. The artworks, and in some cases the artists, have become marketable commodities; the value of these pieces have become connected with their identification with the Brit Art genre, the people who choose to buy them and in some cases the ostentatiously ‘different’ behaviour of the artists. The value associated with these artworks encourages more artists to work in the same tradition, to see the Brit Art style as the new way of working, the new way of expressing oneself through art, and as a result immediately stifles any truly creative potential. The endeavours of these artists can be compared to the artist working on a new idea; trying to improve it but never quite succeeding, knowing it is not quite ‘there’. At the risk of another cliché, this is the ‘authentic artist’ – the artist who is focused on working to develop and improve the idea, trying to respond to the problem, but knowing that this response is not quite good enough. This is not the artist who is ‘trying to be creative’, but the artist who is working at a problem. Precisely because the task ahead is never really achievable, because the creative act cannot be ‘finished’, the artist will be dogged by a greater or lesser sense of their own failure: A creator who isn’t grabbed around the throat by a set of impossibilities is no creator. A creator’s someone who creates their own impossibilities, and thereby creates possibilities . . . without a set of impossibilities, you won’t have the line of flight, the exit that is creation . . . (Deleuze, 1995, p. 133). Yet it is this ‘failure’ that retains the artist as a creative force. At this point it may appear that we are slipping back into transcendent modes of thinking: ‘creativity is good and we need more of it’. But the important distinction here is that we reflect on both the destructive aspects of creativity and the inherently uncreative process of trying to be creative as currently construed. The idea of working at problems is key to the creative process in the Deleuzian perspective, but this cannot be framed by alternative understandings as to what will achieve ‘real’ innovation. The current narrative is still framed within the transcendent discourse of how to be innovative, the need to be innovative; and furthermore it is framed within a
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capitalist mode of thinking: we recognize innovation (creation and the new) in capitalist terms of market success, profitability and so on. What we argue here is that such a narrative is folly, that creativity results from a process of thinking, a process of working, but one not framed (constrained) by known ways of working and thinking.
Creativity and the New . . . Made Strange (Concluding Thoughts) Osborne, in a recent paper proposing a philistine attitude to ‘creativity’, made reference to Deleuze (amongst others) as an exemplar of his argument. Whilst I agreed with the overall message – that we need to liberate ourselves ‘from the potentially moronic consequences of the doctrine of creativity’ (Osborne, 2003, p. 507) – the issue may not be one of needing to be against ‘creativity’, ‘being the philistine’, as much as reconceptualizing what we mean by the notion of ‘creativity’. Osborne argues that there is no need for the concept – as opposed to the word – for a process of inventiveness is sufficient (2003, p. 520). The logic for this is clear, but retaining the word will, inevitably, lead to definitions (territorializations) and attempts at explications of the process. Instead I argue that we need to reflect on the notion of creativity, and hopefully in doing so be more reflective in our thinking, or perhaps more creative in an unconscious way. I have argued that ‘creativity’ is held up as a ‘taken-for-granted’ necessity in today’s turbulent capitalist economy. I have tried to present, or perhaps ‘re-present’, this notion of creativity as a concept based on popular opinion. For Deleuze, opinion is a failure to think: evidence of inertia rather than creativity (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 146). I am not merely suggesting an anti-capitalist stance, although that is certainly a logical response, but a more creative form of thinking; a form of thinking that thinks beyond/outside the discourse of capitalism. Destruction of these opinions must be achieved by disrupting the supposed harmony or unity of experience (Colebrook, 2002). It is inspired by the idea of pulling down the screen of clichés that every culture produces; clichés that have become unprecedentedly trivial and egotistical in our times of hyper-capitalism (Berger, 2001). We are certainly not ‘against creativity’, but suggest that a little more sobriety is needed when calling for creativity, and a little more resistance should be offered to efforts that try to capture what it means to be creative. Nor are we saying that creativity is necessarily ‘bad’ for its © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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destructive effects, just that we also should be reflective of this impact. Inevitably, of course, the process of ‘reflecting’ on the ‘meaning’ of creativity leads to reconceptualizations – and fixes – of the meaning of creativity. Or, alternatively, in our efforts to avoid ‘fixing’ the meaning of creativity, we are left with the question: so what is creativity? Since, for Deleuze, concepts create possibilities for thinking beyond our current assumptions we should focus not on being creative, but on creating concepts that change the way we think. By focusing on existing problems and trying to make sense of them we are creating concepts: we are actually putting our creative potential to work. By establishing ways of ‘being creative’ we are actually limiting our creative potential. To paraphrase Eagleton: to define (creativity) is to destroy it (2004, p. 195). In practical terms we are suggesting this means working at problems, creating concepts, and thinking rather than trying to capture a creative approach, identify the new. And when we think about creativity we need to understand it as a process of thinking and working at something, rather than trying to capture the moment of creation. In essence, by focusing less on the obsession within trying to be creative and the act of creation (as defined and identified) we have a greater chance of being truly creative through the more humble (yet no less significant) act of thinking through problems and of thinking differently. The real ‘new’ is the creation of new concepts: new ways of thinking, new ways of thinking about real problems. So where to go from here? One place to start, perhaps surprisingly, may be that of ‘silence’, or at least a disengagement with the current management discourse (cf. Thrift, 2000, 2002): Repressive forces don’t stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves. What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and even rarer, thing that might be worth saying. What we’re plagued by these days isn’t any blocking of communication, but pointless statements. (Deleuze, 1995, p. 129) Following Deleuze it is worth exploring the suggestion that: ‘creating isn’t communicating but resisting’ (Deleuze, 1995, p. 143). Capitalism and its ‘creative imperative’ does not inhibit the development of ideas, indeed it almost forces this process, demands these very things. The problem is that these things might not be worthwhile (Deleuze, 1995, p. 137). The communication we propose should be resisted is that of ‘common sense’ and ‘consensus in © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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modes of thinking’– resisting creativity as currently construed. This does not mean a wholesale rejection of traditional approaches to creativity: Royal Science can operate alongside minor science. However, it does mean we need to be open to new ways of thinking, to creative processes we do not recognize and that do not fit with our current assessments and measurements of creative processes and outputs, to have the courage to resist the ‘realization’ of current creative practices in favour of the actualization of the new (previously unknown) ways of thinking. Perhaps through this resistance, through this ‘active’ thinking, through simply ‘working’ we can provoke new experiences and possibilities, and ultimately create something worthwhile.
References Bahktin, M. (1984) Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. and trans. C. Emerson. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Berger, J. (2001) Selected Essays. Vintage, New York. Bogue, R. (2004) Deleuze’s Wake: Tributes and Tributaries. State University of New York Press, New York. Buchanan, I. (2000) Deleuzism: A Metacommentary. Duke University Press, Durham, NC. Colebrook, C. (2002) Gilles Deleuze. Routledge, London. Czikszentmilhalyi, M. (1996) Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. Harper Collins, New York. Deleuze, G. (1990) The Logic of Sense, trans. M. Lester with C. Stivale. Athlone Press, London. Deleuze, G. (1994) Difference and Repetition, trans. P. Patton. Columbia University Press, New York. Deleuze, G. (1995) Negotiations, trans M. Joughin. Columbia University Press, New York. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1977) Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. R. Hurley, M. Seem, and H.R. Lane. Viking Press, New York. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1986) Nomadology: The War Machine, trans B. Massumi. Semiotext(e), New York. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans B. Massumi. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1994) What is Philosophy? trans. H. Tomlinson and G. Burchill. Verso, London. Drazin, R., Glynn, M.A. and Kazanjian, R.K. (1999) ‘Multilevel Theorizing about Creativity in Organizations: A Sensemaking Perspective’. Academy of Management Review, 24, pp. 286–307. Eagleton, T. (2004) After Theory. Penguin, London. Foucault, M. (1989) Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans R. Howard, Routledge. London. Getz, I. and Robinson, A.G. (2003) ‘Innovate or Die: Is that a fact?’. Creativity and Innovation Management, 12, pp. 130–35.
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Hardt, M. (1993) Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy. University of Minnesota Press, London. Mauzy, J. and Harriman, R. (2003) Creativity, Inc.: Building an Inventive Organization. Harvard Business School, Boston MA. Nietzsche, F.W. (1976) Nietzsche, ed. and trans. W. Kaufman. Penguin, London. Osborne, T. (2003) ‘Against ‘Creativity’: A Philistine Rant’. Economy and Society, 32, pp. 507– 25. Patton, P. (2000) Deleuze and the Political. Routledge, London. Schumpeter, J.A. (1942) Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. Harper & Row, New York. Smith, D.W. (2003) ‘Deleuze and Derrida, Immanence and Transcendence: Two Directions in Recent French Thought’, in Patton, P. and Protevi, J. (eds.), Between Deleuze & Derrida. Continuum London.
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Thrift, N. (2000) ‘Performing Cultures in the New Economy’. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 90, pp. 674–92. Thrift, N. (2002) ‘Think and Act Like Revolutionaries: Episodes From the Global Triumph of Management Discourse’. Critical Quarterly, 44, pp. 19–26.
Emma Jeanes (
[email protected]) is a lecturer in organizational behaviour at the University of Exeter. Her research interests have included explorations of creativity and innovation in the public-service sector, but in recent years she has taken a more philosophical approach to organization studies, and creativity in particular.
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Identity Sniping: Innovation, Imagination and the Body Bent Meier Sørensen I have asked myself often enough whether, on a grand scale, philosophy has been no more than an interpretation of the body and a misunderstanding of the body. The Gay Science, Friedrich Nietzsche Two routes to the creation of the new dominate the current literature on innovation: one is guided by fantasy, brainstorms and free interaction, the other one is focused on knowledgesharing technologies and the implementation of new organizational forms. Eventually, however, this article rejects both routes, further arguing that innovation is a matter of details and the work invested in creating such details. The body plays a crucial role here, and a case from weapon design innovation exemplifies this insight: that the creation of new knowledge always happens through a crisis in which the body trembles. This crisis is called an event where new and unforeseen connections between the individual and the organization becomes possible.
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iscussions of innovation often take a distinction between order and chaos as their point of departure (cf. Boeddrich, 2004; Brown & Eisenhardt, 1998; Stacey, 1992). Typically, such discussions proceed by rather clear-cut dualisms: bureaucracy versus adhocracy, the hierarchical organization versus flat organizational forms, organization versus inspiration; and the ability of the organization to innovate is seen as a function of its level of (productive) ‘order’ and (creative) ‘chaos’. But it may be time to take issue with this distinction: time to acknowledge some often forgotten (normally repressed) functions of the body. For it is, I will argue, the transformation of the body that provides the locus of the innovative process: the human body, to be sure, but also the organizational body and any possible social body. In this article, I will sketch out the proposed ruling dualism and will elaborate an example of the meeting of art with the military-industrial complex in support of the two related theses: (1) a transformation of knowledge (i.e. innovation) is always intimately connected to a transformation of the body (i.e. a crisis) and (2) any such transformation is contingent on work. The dualism between order and chaos, the very emergence of ‘the new’ in the organization, can be expressed in two different ways, each of which we will ultimately have to give up, albeit for different reasons. Boeddrich pro© 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
vides us with one of them: ‘the fantasy route to innovation’ (Boeddrich, 2004, p. 275). Here one finds those managers (and management theorists) who believe that the generation of ideas cannot be organized at all. On this view, ‘creativity and ideas will emerge only in an absolutely free and somewhat chaotic environment’ (Boeddrich, 2004, p. 275). Even the description of this route exposes the painfully imprecise language that haunts organization theory: ‘absolute’ freedom in a ‘somewhat’ chaotic environment. But perhaps the fantasy route is somewhat absolutely hallucinatory: novelty is construed as an accidental gift from the gods, propagated through processes that humans cannot and should not interfere with. In philosophical terms, this position is characterized by transcendence: the new is bestowed upon the (organized) world from a source that is itself uncontaminated by organization. Our world, the immediate and immanent world, is, on this view, irrevocably separated from real creativity. But by meticulously abstaining from organization, by letting some ‘designated’ areas remain free from organization, we can nevertheless make it possible for the organization to receive novelty, to let novelty into its organism. The connection between the transcendent realm of fantasy, however, and the immanent realm of the actual organization – the connection by which
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new knowledge might in fact enter the organization – has been a tricky one to capture throughout the history of organization theory. To give a name to the connection between (divine) inspiration and the (worldly) organization, modern innovation theorists have coined the term ‘the fuzzy front end’ of the innovation process, where a certain amount of ‘intellectual resources’ is invested (Brodbeck et al., 2004). This is often expected to happen through especially innovative teams consisting of members of the creative class working in (absolutely) cross-disciplinary and (somewhat) spacy environments with extravagant colour, designer furniture and plenty of café latte. But however fuzzily one goes about this process, the fantasy route to innovation will always eventually separate the immanent world of everyday business from the transcendent world of inspiration and creation, thus separating the organization from its imagination. If Boeddrich finds the fantasy route to innovation at one end of a spectrum, he finds ‘the technocratic route to innovation’ at the other (Boeddrich, 2004, p. 275). Here technology and organization are crucial to the generation of the new. All the information we need is somehow already there; what we need to do is make it available, to turn information into knowledge, as the slogan goes. The enormous and rapidly growing knowledge management tradition starts with this insight and sets out to solve the problem of the new as a problem of technology. This tradition cannot be accused of seeking transcendence since the new is here construed as being already inside the organization, already present within its technology and bureaucracy, often (somewhat mysteriously) described as ‘tacit knowledge’ (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). But philosophy has another name for the problem of this position: tautology. After all, the problem of the new is here solved by way of the problem itself. We try to invent a new technology by way of our current technology, discover new knowledge by way of our current knowledge and it should not surprise us that path dependency has become a key term in innovation research (cf. David, 1985). Once the QWERTY-keyboard was there, the fuzzy front end of keyboard innovations became significantly less fuzzy. In order to stop feeding the dog with its own tail, knowledge management theorists should, in Alexander Styhre’s acute formulation, ‘defamiliarize the belief in knowledge as being accumulated facta bruta turned into organizational resources through various managerial practices and operations’ (Styhre, 2003, p. 37). In innovation theory, one is often left in either of these two (dead) ends. In the one end
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we are faced with chaos and ‘a thousand flowers blooming’. The colourful expression is here owed to Kanter’s (Kanter, 2000) (mal)appropriation of Chairman Mao’s slogan for the Cultural Revolution, and this is also why we eventually have to give up this route: transcendent and cosmological ideologies are, quite literally and each on their own footing, dangerously dead ends. At the other end, then, we are left in a totally organized and perfectly manageable environment, the equally deadly ‘iron cage’ so feared by Max Weber1 and Franz Kafka, where various sophisticated social technologies and up-to-date knowledge-sharing technologies (hardware, software and wetware) are assumed to handle the creation of the new. In each end, we are entangled in grand schemes: innovation is a big business, or a business of the big.
Making Events Work In the following, I want to argue that both the fantasy route to innovation and the technocracy route to innovation suffer from grand scheme delusions. Basbøll and Sørensen have discovered (albeit by a rather peculiar procedure) that ‘people often learn assemblage techniques in normal (grand narrative) episodes’, and suggest that, ‘when giving orders, always leave something completely obscured’. After all, they add parenthetically, ‘most people expect terror’ (2005, p. 133). Organization theory is by no means the only culprit here. For centuries, the young have been taught only to think big. When the new Humboldt universities were established in early nineteenthcentury Europe and North America, philosophy was a happy accomplice in the important business of turning knowledge and thinking into grand narratives: everything was to derive from an originary principle (Truth) and everything was to be related to an ideal (Justice), precisely in order for every idea to unify with the highest principle, which the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel called simply the State (cf. Massumi, 1992, p. 4ff). Whatever our expectations may have been, we have all become small, mostly mediocre state philosophers subjected to what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari call ‘Royal Science’. Even 1
Weber warns against both the communist and the capitalist bureaucratic megamachine, strikingly investing the same biological metaphors as Kanter and Mao: ‘Not summer’s bloom lies ahead of us, but rather a polar night of icy darkness and hardness, no matter which group may triumph externally now’, Weber quoted in Ritzer, 1992, p. 132. © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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our present anticipation of terror is delusional. But, in opposition to Royal Science, there is a science of the detail and of the infamous, ‘one of becoming and heterogeneity, as opposed to the stable, the eternal, the identical, the constant’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 361), a minor science. This is a science that, contrary to organization theory, deals with the accidental and the small. Indeed, organization theory in toto suffers from an obsession with ‘molarity’, that is, an obsession with large ossified structures (such as the Organization, the Sign and the Subject) and a view from above and from without (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 159ff). Countering the molarity of the social sciences, Deleuze and Guattari offer a view on change that is molecular. They not only take their inspiration from modern physics and mathematics, but also from sources more familiar to the field of organization theory; in particular, they read the nineteenth-century sociologist Gabriel Tarde. According to Tarde, what happens in the innovative process is that ‘great constant forces . . . are given direction by small, accidental, new forces, which, by being grafted on the first ones, set into motion a new kind of periodic reproduction’ (Tarde quoted in Taymans, 1950, p. 616). This ‘grafting on’ is not a matter of fantasizing or doing something completely different or being inspired in weird ways. Neither is it a matter of (re)installing new expensive knowledge sharing technologies or other gadgets. It is, fundamentally, a matter of work: ‘Everything always comes from work, including the free gift of the idea that arrives’ (Serres, 1997, p. 90). Work expresses the body as it experiments with its last bit of energy; you almost work yourself to death with this or that, just to bring the matter you are working with to fruition. The French playwright Pierre Corneille would undress and roll himself up in a blanket before he started writing. Here he would sweat profusely on the premise that the ‘work of genius transpires from the body like a secretion. It emerges from the glands’ (Serres, 1997, p. 91). Kant famously walked the same route in Königsberg every day, but instead of feeding the commonplace prejudice of the anal-retentive character indulging his forced, bureaucratic moves, one might envision what incredible imagination and energy was harnessed in these walks. Rousseau and Diderot walked dozens of kilometres every day, and where we normally conceive a philosopher to be a degenerate, ephemeral, and ghostlike cripple, asthmatic and intoxicated, the name ‘Plato’ is in Greek a nickname that signifies ‘broad-shouldered’. In Hellas every free spirit was preparing himself for the Games. © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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When work and training wears you and your colleagues out, you are close to the secret of innovation, where the body trembles: I tremble at what exceeds my seeing and my knowing [mon voir et mon savoir] although it concerns the innermost parts of me, right down to my soul, down to the bone, as we say. Inasmuch as it tends to undo both seeing and knowing, trembling is indeed an experience of secrecy or of mystery, but another secret, another enigma, or another mystery comes on top of the unliveable experience, adding yet another seal or concealment to the tremor. (Derrida, 1995, p. 54) The innovative event is this other mystery. It is also expressed in Baruch Spinoza’s slogan, that, indeed, ‘no one has yet determined what the body can do, that is, experience has not yet taught anyone what the body can do’ (Spinoza, 1996, III P 2S). While the body’s ultimate limit is death, the penultimate limit of what it can do is exactly the event. The event is always the way we appropriate our awareness (what Søren Kierkegaard termed Ahnelsen) of what we are capable of, of what our body can do, something we can never be sure of, but catch sight of in glimpses. It is the indeterminacy of these glimpses that makes us tremble: ‘A concert is being performed tonight. It is the event’ (Deleuze, 1993, p. 80). Instead of seeing new knowledge as either a god given gift that muses (i.e. highly paid ‘process consultants’) should bring about, or as a substance and an entity to be managed technocratically, I propose to conceive of knowledge not as an entity, but as an event, a number of actual occasions, incidents, encounters (Styhre, 2003, p. 36; cf. also Whitehead, 1978). Knowledge is a critical event, and innovation occurs when you put your event to work and multiply your crisis (Sørensen, 2004). In this sense, the event is not just what actually happens; there is a whole science to it, albeit a minor one; it has ‘a shadowy and secret part that is continually subtracted from or added to its actualization: in contrast with the state of affairs, it neither begins nor ends but has gained or kept the infinite movement to which it gives consistency’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 156). As Kant (believe it!) suggested, we must revitalize thinking as a critical process, again let thinking throw life into a crisis. This crisis is an event, a minor but radical change of status in which the future is decided upon. This critical event is radical in the very etymological sense of the word: pertaining to the roots or radicles of the matter, that is, pertaining to the detailed rhizome-structure of which everything is constructed (on the rhizome, see
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Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 3ff). A minor science examines rhizome structures, and in the knowledge society knowledge must, as Styhre convincingly argues, be thought of as rhizomatic (cf. Styhre, 2003, p. 36). As Søren Kierkegaard understood, the event is the decision: a dangerous moment of madness but also the moment of the revolutionary leap that leaves you out of your depth, a leap of faith. This event expresses that ‘something’, aloquid, which always escapes history (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 171ff). History is what happens, but the event is what we make of what happens (Buchanan, 2000). A minor science is empirical and very practical, so the question remains: which of the happenings in the world will you make something out of? As a rule of thumb, you will here want to look for the exemplary event. This should be an interesting event, it should be inter-esse, between beings, where things pick up speed: ‘An example is neither general (as is a system of concepts) nor particular (as in the material to which a system is applied). It is “singular” ’ (Massumi, 2002, p. 17). The interesting is not always exciting; indeed, many exemplary events are boring and insignificant, infamous and even annoying. However, all this makes them so much more relevant.
Identity Sniping We will work with the example of the ID Sniper: an innovation in weapons design, a functional rifle designed for what today may be called homeland security purposes. At first sight, this is not the story of a radical innovation. It is imitative; let us say it makes a virtue of its path dependency. Yet, it is the fact that it is so insignificantly different from other inventions that makes all the difference. As we will see, its inventor, the Danish entrepreneur Jacob Boeskov, is going to attend a trade fair to present his innovation. It is all jolly familiar stuff in today’s world: someone invents a new weapon and is going to find investors to help him put it into production. Like any weapon, Jacob’s gun has its futuristic elegance. Its design signals lightness and precision, following the trend in current weapons design to anticipate installing the weapon in a video game (arms merchandizing, if you will). The ID Sniper is an easy-assembly weapon; like another James Bond, you can bring it along in a little suitcase and assemble it when you get to the well-appointed room in the building you want to fire the gun from. The idea of the device is to shoot a suspicious individual at a long range. This will then implant a GPS-microchip into the body of the
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suspect using the sniper rifle as a long distance injector. This ‘VeriChip’ will enter the body and stay there, causing no internal damage. Graphs accompanying the weapon depict the miniscule amount of physical pain that the target will suffer. Also, a zoom-lens attached to the rifle will take a picture of the suspect and all the information will be stored centrally. Obviously, there is a market for this gun. With the growing popularity of ‘dissidence’ in Western, democratic societies, new ways of engaging with the enemy are called for. It no longer makes sense to confine the individual, as it did in the disciplinary society: when you have the ability (and legitimacy) to confine him, it is too late. Today, in Deleuze’s ‘societies of control’ (1992), you must trace the individual and draw a map: to be sure, the Deleuzian vocabulary is adopted as much by the powers that be as by any resistance against them. Michel Foucault’s assertion that one day this century may be known as Deleuzian is as a rule read as a praise, but it remains, in my view, ambigious: the vision of an all-encompassing Deleuzian Zeitgeist beats Orwell and Huxley by far. The story of the ID Sniper is a classical story of entrepreneurship. It starts with a brilliant idea: a tool designed for crowd control that will enable law enforcement to prevent criminal actions from being committed, an example of a genuine pre-emptive technology. And in yet another regard, the ID Sniper rifle resembles a classical story of innovation: it never made it to the market. The rifle never fired a shot, no urban warriors were ever hit with the VeriChip and no suspicious subjects were ever traced over continents with the software that was to accompany the product. This fate is also a fate shared by an overwhelming majority of innovations in business history (Cooper, 2001). What makes the story of the ID Sniper rifle just a little different from a classical story of innovation is that the entrepreneurs behind this innovation never wanted it to become a success. In fact, the same entrepreneurs investigated the possibility of patenting the product, not in order to secure the intellectual property rights for themselves but in order to make certain that nobody else ever realized the product. This, of course, turned out to be much more complicated than the development of the ID Sniper concept itself, and they had to leave it there. The goal of the enterprise was, in their own words, to ‘take the essence of an imagined future, turn it into a concept and present this concept in present day reality. Report the reactions’ (Boeskov, 2003, p. 10). So, our entrepreneur deploys force – either actions of the mind or actions of the body – and by that means he gets re-actions: this is © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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how the innovation is put to work and how the entrepreneur multiplies his crisis. It is on account of these re-actions that it is possible to re-construct, via negativa, the nature of the environment into which you insert your production. In this case, the entrepreneur is investigating the nature of the politico-military complex, and is mapping out its body. This only confirms Frederic Jameson’s claim that late capitalism works not opposed to but in accordance with the postmodern critique of unification and reason: it thrives on flux and mobility, it relentlessly produces anti-essentialism and anti-foundationalism (Jameson, 1990, p. 150ff). Its joyous side is, believe it or not, the commercials of United Colours of Benetton, and you are indeed going the other way, to the first international weapons fair hosted by the Republic of China’s police authorities at the China Police 2002 fair. Here the ID Sniper will be presented; here the innovation is put to work. Marketing, as we know, always begins before the product is produced. In fact, in the experience economy, marketing is the production of the product.
Fear and Trembling in Beijing ‘We were all getting scared’ is the crew at Empire North’s reaction to Jacob’s take off for Beijing. They ask themselves what would happen if he were found out, if the league of international weapons dealers realized that an attempt was being made to dupe them. A day prior to take off, the Editor-in-Chief of Black Box Magazine, where Jacob’s story was scheduled later to appear, renounced all responsibility for the endeavour. The fear of being ‘found out’ will not leave Jacob at any time during the journey to China; it is a fear, by the way, that is also prominent amongst entrepreneurial academics. This fear is only intensified by Jacob’s arrival in Beijing City: ‘We drive on, passing alien shining architecture. My heart is beating. I feel like shit. . . . I feel overheated in my dark suit . . . it’s my armour’ (Boeskov, 2003, pp. 17–18). The feeling of alienation at the international weapons fair increases as the situation at the fair becomes more concrete, practical and empirical. There are other weapons dealers in this world; Empire North has been assigned a booth beside a company that produces armed robots. They roam around on the floor, restless, and seeking, like everybody else, attention. Jacob finds himself in a perpetual crisis. The first body to react to this process of crisis – innovative but dangerous – is Jacob’s own organism: the functions that are normally con© 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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trolled by the autonomous nervous system are getting out of control, a fever is coming on, together with nausea and dizziness. Control is no longer possible, and Jacob is turning his suit into a weapon in order to regain control and re-organize the body and its fluids and excrements: I am suddenly confused; my sense of time is messed up from the jetlag. Did I oversleep?? I feel another panic attack coming on, my heart racing as if I have had too much coffee. I still have terrible stomach cramps. (Boeskov, 2003, p. 20) Jacob ceases to be an individual and becomes a host of dividuals (Deleuze, 1994, p. 258), that is, singular, intensive affects, series of events, which his nervous system, that is, his habits, cannot integrate in his learned habitus. The constant tremor, which he seeks to quell with various drugs and alcohol, is not primarily a symptom of anxiety, but points to the almost non-perceptible rhythm of the body as it passes through the event. The event is now in an intense stage. It is what Deleuze terms its ‘virtual phase’, where everything is transformation and becoming: the actual history of incidents becomes a virtual multiplicity of events (Deleuze, 1990). This crisis is a movement that might allow for the leap of faith, and it is here that Jacob is finding the catastrophe of his time. This is how he works out his problem, and, by implication, our problem. The catastrophe is the point where the drama turns against itself, and the inevitable turn is the only inevitability to speak of: the inevitable is the singular, and the key to the event. The body cramps up, and empties itself, while it contemplates the question: what can I do? For, as Spinoza just confided to us, the body does not yet know what it can do, it does not know what it is capable of, it has not yet found the thresholds of its powers to affect and be affected. But it is rapidly finding out, and, to avoid too much innovative and painful knowledge, Jacob turns (as do we) to consumption. He finds his body craving: ‘I have a desire for a cigarette, a piece of chocolate, something’ (Boeskov, 2003, p. 16). The body is turned into the perfect consumer with an extremely volatile desire for, simply, whatever, just as long as it is some thing, some thing that will take the place of the crucial event, bringing the weapon to the weapons dealers. The rush of sugar, nicotine, drugs and alcohol takes the place of the all-too-real and laborious combats of the concrete event at the dangerous journey. The weapons fair becomes more and more intense. Jacob seems to get closer and closer to the real thing, the turning point of the event of the fair: the limit between life and death, peace
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and war. He discusses the present market situation with a Brazilian colleague, Fredericio, and the business possibilities turn out to be dependant on the concrete number of deaths in a delicate way. Says Fredericio: ‘You know, if you don’t have any international conflict, they don’t need the product. If there is too much, you can’t reach the market! It’s a question of balance’ (Boeskov, 2003, p. 28). At one point, a French diplomat wants to know more about the weapon, and approaches the ID Sniper booth. He is suspicious about its functionality; after all, it is a weapons fair. Jacob breaks into a sweat. The French diplomat wants to know if the GPS chip does not cause damage to the intestines of the demonstrators, and he asks about the calibre of the gun. Jacob has absolutely no idea of what calibre means: ‘No, no, not inches, centimetres’, he hears himself saying, ‘We might use gas . . .’. He feels blood rushing to his head. The diplomat leaves, grinning. ‘Well, just shoot ‘em in the butt’, his head turning one last time, looking back at the flabbergasted inventor. Towards the end of the fair Empire North’s booth is approached by civil servants from the Chinese authorities.2 Jacob eventually finds himself in a meeting paired up with a highranking Chinese official. She wants to know whether Empire North faces problems with legislation in regards to a potential production of the ID Sniper. Since a production currently does not seem realistic in Europe because of human rights bureaucracy, she offers to move the whole factory, its employees and their families to China, at whatever cost necessary. Jacob’s reaction is immediate: ‘I shudder. This is not in the script. I am on thin ice. I must stop this’ (Boeskov, 2003).
The Power of the False The script of this exemplary event was a hoax from the begining, the script was false. In the exemplary event, the narrator (the Empire North CEO) has, according to Deleuze and Guattari, no principle of truth, only of relevance: the narrator ‘is something only by being something else. . . . He is a girl only by being an old man who is miming or simulating the girl’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1984, p. 87). Or he is a weapons developer only by being an artist who is miming or simulating the weap2
In other performances (for instance at MOMA in New York in 2004), Jacob Boeskov has documented that also Western authorities have shown great interest in the ID Sniper.
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ons developer. Where Nietzsche talks about the power of the false, Kierkegaard talks about the power of delusion, and his narrator ‘sees whether he can delude the other by the imitation and carry him along into the subsequent development, which is his own creation by virtue of the idea’ (Kierkegaard, 1980, p. 55) Is Jacob a liar? Are we, when we – without much practical experience – teach entrepreneurship in business school or practice consultancy in high-tech businesses or, each in our own singular way, manage creativity and innovations in organizations? Let us say we are minor philosophers, that we are becoming entrepreneurs, which is our own creation by virtue of the idea. In the exemplary event of this paper, the declared purpose was: ‘Take the essence of an imagined future, turn it into a concept and present this concept in present day reality. Report the reactions’. But what we find out here is that the most important reactions are not to be found among the innovator’s contemporaries, the Chinese and French consumers of high-tech weaponry, but in the innovator himself. Jacob does not know that his weapon will work. Indeed, we want to say he does not know how it works, nor even how it might possibly work. And yet, he has both an image and a concept of it. Can we say that he does not know it will work and his anxiety is that he suspects it will? That seems to be the point of this story. In the story of the ID Sniper, it is this suspicion that provides the relevant locus of organizational transformation. It is never confirmed (for that would be terminal) but it is continually intensified. Jacob’s ignorance is monumental – he measures calibre in centimetres, he proposes gas as an alternative – and yet he gets the idea across. After all, his potential investors at the weapons fair also suspect it will work: the French diplomat is no doubt finally disabused of this suspicion; the Chinese, however, understand the ‘technicality’ to be a legal one. Jacob’s idea becomes increasingly interesting, inter-esse, between-the-beings that descend on Beijing, and in the middle is where things pick up speed (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 25). There was always something missing from the ID Sniper – reality, we might say: the Real. And in the heat of his panic it is anything (’something’) that the inventor craves to make his anxiety go away. He is experiencing the multiplicity flows, the connectivity of desire that just is creativity. He is becoming fluid; he is caught in the middle; he is picking up speed. At the climax he shudders. ‘I must stop this’. For if until then he had not known but suspected that the ID Sniper would work he now remains equally ignorant but suspects that it © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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will not work, could never work. He is now here: nowhere. It is not that the internal damage would be too great (Hell! He can always shoot them in the ass; he can always use gas . . .). It is that the VeriChip has nothing to verify, there is nothing there to take a picture of, nothing for the software to track. The ID sniper might target an ‘identity’ but it will never find its mark. The chip will pass right through the suit and the body. Jacob becomes anything – something. The innovator has become aloquid – a liquid. Everything flows, said Heraclitus famously, and Luce Irigaray specifies the nature of the fluidity: ‘the fluid is always a relation of excess or lack vis-à-vis unity’ (Irigaray quoted in Styhre, 2003, p. 35; cf. also Linstead, 2000). This excess is not the ‘welfare’ tsunami of consumption and obesity or the yearly pay-raise for cool-hunters. This excess is the indistinct detail, which is the sign of creativity and transformation. Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety was originally titled Ahnelsen, which is Danish for ‘suspicion’, ‘presentiment’, or vague ‘sense of something’; anxiety, or the sickness unto death, is the ultimate threshold while the pre-sentiment is the penultimate limit, and Kierkegaard’s work with titles displays this zone both of indistinction and indecision. There is, as Jacob’s exemplary event amply shows, suffering connected to this passage, from which one will not re-emerge before life itself has become a problem: I suffer, hence I change (Serres, 1997). This passage is, if only seldom recognized as such, a veritable moment of danger, and it is in this apotheosis of the virtual event itself that new knowledge is created.
References Basbøll, T. and Sørensen, B.M. (2005) Resentment. In Jones, C. and O’Doherty, D. (eds) Manifestos for the Business School of Tomorrow Dvalin Books Åbo pp. 131–39. Boeddrich, H.J. (2004) Ideas in the Workplace: A New Approach Towards Organizing the Fuzzy Front End of the Innovation Process. Creativity and Innovation Management, 13, 274–85. Boeskov, J. (2003) My Doomsday Weapon. Black Box Magazine, 1, part V. Brodbeck, H., Lichtenthaler, E., Savoiz, P. and Birkenmeier, B. (2004) Organisation of the Early Phases of the Radical Innovation Process. International Journal of Technology Intelligence and Planning, 1, 100–14. Brown, S.L. and Eisenhardt, K.M. (1998) Competing on the edge: strategy as structured chaos. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. Buchanan, I. (2000) Deleuzism. A Metacommentary, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.
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Cooper, R.G. (2001) Winning at New Products: Accelerating the Process from Idea to Launch. Perseus Books, Reading, MA. David, P.A. (1985) Clio and the Economics of QWERTY. American Economic Review 75, May, 332–37. Deleuze, G. (1990) The Logic of Sense. Columbia University Press, New York. Deleuze, G. (1992) Postscript on the Societies of Control, October, 59, pp. 3–7. Deleuze, G. (1993) The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Deleuze, G. (1994) Difference and Repetition. Columbia University Press, New York. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1984) Anti-Oedipus. Viking Press, New York. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1994) What is Philosophy? Columbia University Press, New York. Derrida, J. (1995) The Gift of Death. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Jameson, F. (1990) Late Marxism. Adorno, or, the Persistence of the Dialectic. Verso, London. Kanter, R.M. (2000) When a Thousand Flowers Bloom. Structural, Collective, and Social Conditions for Innovation in Organizations. In Swedberg, R. (ed.), Entrepreneurship. The Social Science View. Oxford University Press, Oxford pp. 167– 210. Kierkegaard, S. (1980) The Concept of Anxiety. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Linstead, S. (2000) Dangerous Fluids and the Organization-without-Organs. In Hassard, J., Holliday, R. and Willmot, H. (eds), Body and Organization. London, Sage, pp. 31–51. Massumi, B. (1992) A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Massumi, B. (2002) Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Duke University Press, Durham. Nonaka, I. and Takeuchi, H. (1995) The KnowledgeCreating Company. How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. Oxford University Press, New York. Ritzer, G. (1992) Sociological Theory. McGraw-Hill, New York. Stacey, R.D. (1992) Managing the Unknowable: Strategic Boundaries Between Order and Chaos in Organizations. Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, CA. Serres, M. (1997) The Troubadour of Knowledge. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. Spinoza, B. (1996) Ethics. Penguin Books, London. Styhre, A. (2003) Knowledge Management Beyond Codification: Knowing as Practice/Concept. Journal of Knowledge Management, 7(5), 32–40. Sørensen, B.M. (2004) Making Events Work. Or, How to Multiply Your Crisis. Samfundslitteratur, Copenhagen. Taymans, A.C. (1950) Tarde and Schumpeter: A Similar Vision. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 64, 611–22. Whitehead, A.N. (1978) Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology. Free Press, New York.
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Bent Meier Sørensen (
[email protected]) is Associate Professor in Management Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School. He is working with technology, art as critique and entrepreneurship. Currently, he is developing further the Master in Business Administration and Philosophy that CBS features, and which attracts a wide range of engaged students. He has co-edited Deleuze and the Social (Edinburgh University Press).
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Organization Creativity and the Empiricist Image of Novelty Alexander Styhre This paper examines the notion of the new (and its associative concepts such as novelty, newness, originality) so central to the organization creativity and innovation literature. Rather than taking the idea of the new and novelty for granted, the ontological and epistemological assumptions regarding the idea of the new deserve a proper analysis. In this article, an empiricist philosophical tradition of thinking represented by for instance James and Deleuze is examined. While rationalist traditions of thinking are praising the new and novelty as an extraordinary event, empiricism conceives of creation and novelty as continually taking place in the restless change innate to being. In empiricist thinking, the idea of the new is something of a truism because new connections and assemblages are continuously produced in the course of action. Thinking of creation and innovation as not extraordinary events but a regular operation may open up for alternative views of creativity and innovation management previously neglected or marginalized.
Introduction n the literature on organization creativity (Amabile, 1997; Amabile, et al., 1996; Amabile & Conti, 1999; Andriopoulos, 2001; Boden, 1996; Jeffcut, 2000; Madjar, Oldham & Pratt, 2002; Nyström, 2000; Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Unsworth, 2001), the notion of creativity is aimed at capturing what is novel, in the making, in a state of becoming, not yet Vorhanden. It is naturally tempting to to colonialize such a construct and make use of for disciplines and formations of knowledge aimed at understanding the dynamics of industries and businesses. The idea of a management of creativity or creativity management is therefore not the wholly surprising outcome from the wedding of a managerial rationalist ethos and the quest for the new. In the world of business, novelty and creation are two highly priced qualities. In Strannegård’s (2002) formulation, ‘nothing compares to the new’; new commodities, new work practices, new joint ventures, and new competencies and so forth, are often praised in the management discourse. Yet, the very notion of organization is, as for instance Weick and Westley (1999) point out, in opposition to the idea of the new. Organizations are able to persist with changes because of their capacity to institu-
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tionalize routine activities. Organizations are then, to use Adorno’s (2000) formulation, ‘congealed action’, sediments of continuously repeated practices and routines. The idea of novelty is a perennial issue in philosophy. Pre-Socratic thinkers such as Heraclitus thought of novelty as what is innate to being, while on the contrary, Parmenides denied all forms of change (Plato, 1996). Aristotle regarded Parmenides’ denial of change and movement as being ‘the next door to lunacy’ (Feyerabend, 1999) but his logical argumentation has been haunting philosophy ever since. In general, it can be argued that the notion of the ‘new’ is rarely examined as a philosophical construct embedded in particular ontological and epistemological traditions. The aim of this article is therefore to discuss the notion of the new in an empiricist philosophical programme represented by a series of philosophers, where William James and Gilles Deleuze will be examined in greater detail. This article is structured as follows. First, the notion of novelty in the organization creativity discourse is explored. Second, creativity is illustrated by references to new drug development in the pharmaceutical industry. Lastly, some conclusions are drawn and some implications for theory and practice are discussed.
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Creativity and the New The creativity management literature does not commonly address ontological and epistemological issues. One particular tradition of thinking grappling with the notion of the new is the empiricism tradition of thinking represented by the American pragmatist philosopher William James, and more recently by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (Baugh, 2001; Linstead & Mullarkey, 2003; Wood & Ferlie, 2003). James and Deleuze are here selected because they are prominent thinkers and represent two different time periods and cultures, the American and the French. Yet their work shares a number of themes. James, the first widely known American philosopher to hold the chair in philosophy at Harvard University, speaks of his philosophy as ‘radical empiricism’ and is placing it in opposition to rationalism: Empiricism is known as the opposite of rationalism. Rationalism tends to emphasize universals and to make wholes prior to parts in the order of logic as well as in that being. Empiricism, on the contrary, lays the explanatory stress on the part, the element, the individual, and treats the whole as a collection and the universal as an abstraction. My descriptions of things, accordingly, start with the parts and makes of the whole a being of the second order. It is essentially a mosaic philosophy, a philosophy of plural facts. (James, 1912, pp. 41–42) For James, empiricism is aiming at understanding how things are constituted qua things through the integration and assembling of various parts; philosophy is therefore what is exploring what is inherently plural and composed of many and diverse components. James again contrasts this view against the rationalist tradition of thinking, assuming transcendence, that is, the ontological existence of absolute forms and universal categories determining the form and matter of things: In actual mosaics the pieces are held together by their bedding, for which bedding the substances, transcendental Egos, or Absolutes of other philosophies may be taken to stand. In radical empiricism there is no bedding; it is as if the pieces clung together by their edges, the transitions experienced between them forming their cement. (James, 1912, pp. 86–87) James is then claiming that in the programme of radical empiricism, there is no need for transcendental explanations. The things are instead what is produced through the restless coming together of parts into wholes, into
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what Deleuze would later call assemblages or multiplicities, complexes simultaneously being constituted as ‘objects/representations/ practice’ (Stengers, 1997, p. 204). Although Deleuze rarely, if ever, recognizes James as an influence or references his works, there is a clear line of continuity, one may argue, originating from Bergson’s Creative Evolution (1998) via James to Deleuze. Deleuze’s declaration of his philosophical programme named transcendental empiricism’ (Deleuze, 1990, 1994) is above all drawing on an empiricist ontology similar to that of James. The reference to ‘transcendence’ is puzzling for many readers of Deleuze. Transcendence does not here denote any Platonist affiliations, but is rather part of a complementary vocabulary aimed at overturning the Platonist philosophical system. Deleuze drags transcendence back to earth and locates it in the matter of being. Deleuze explains in a passage worth quoting at length: In so-called rationalist philosophies, the abstract is given the task of explaining, and it is the abstract that is realized in the concrete. One starts with abstractions such as the One, the Whole, the subject, and one looks for a process by which they are embodied in a world which they make conform to their requirements (this process can be knowledge, virtue, history . . .) . . . Empiricism starts with a completely different evaluation: analyzing the states of things, in such a way that non-preexistent concepts can be extracted from them. States of things are neither unities nor totalities, but multiplicities. It is not just that there are several states of things (each of which would be yet another); not that each state of things is itself a multiple (which would simply be to indicate its resistance to unification). The essential thing, from the point of view of empiricism, is the noun multiplicity, which designates a set of lines or dimensions which are irreducible to one another. Every ‘thing’ is made up this way. Of course a multiplicity includes forces of unification, centres of totalization, points of subjectification, but as factors which can prevent its growth and stop its lines. These factors are in the multiplicity to which they belong, and not the reverse. In a multiplicity what counts are not the terms or the elements, but what there is ‘between’, the between, a set of relations which are not separable from each other. Every multiplicity grows from the middle, like the blade of grass or the rhizome. We constantly oppose the rhizome to the tree, like two conceptions and even two very different ways of thinking. (Deleuze and Parnet, 2002, pp. vii–viii) © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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Starting with an analysis of ‘the states of things’ is the mark of the empiricist programme. Deleuze (2002) goes even farther, speaking of philosophy as ‘the theory of multiplicities’: ‘Philosophy is the theory of multiplicities, each of which is composed of actual and virtual elements. Purely actual objects do not exist. Every actual surrounds itself with a cloud of virtual images’ (Deleuze, 2002, p. 148). In one of his earliest publications, Empiricism and Subjectivity, Deleuze (1991. First published in 1953) examines the philosophy of Hume. Deleuze here speaks of ‘the fundamental principle of empiricism, the principle of difference’ (Deleuze, 1991, p. 90. Emphasis in the original). Difference is the distinction between not only entities such as things, but also between virtuality and actuality, a conceptual framework that Deleuze adopted from Bergson’s Matter and Memory and developed in his work Bergsonism (Deleuze, 1966/1988). Virtuality and actuality are coexisting in simultaneity and are jointly feeding into one another in the process of becoming: ‘Virtuality exists in such a way that it actualises itself as it dissociates itself: it must dissociate itself to actualise itself. Differentiation is the movement of a virtuality actualising itself’ (Deleuze, 2004, p. 40). Olkowski explicates this idea further: ‘[A]ctualization of the virtual is a matter of difference, divergence, or creation’(1999, p. 232). Ansell Pearson exemplifies: ‘At any moment in our lives we are neither simply one nor many but an unfolding and enfolding virtual multiplicity’ (2002, p. 5). For Deleuze, Bergson, and before him Spinoza and to some extent Nietzsche, are philosophers of the new, of novelty, of becoming, and therefore also philosophers adhering to an empiricist philosophical programme. For instance, Deleuze praises Bergson for the strong emphasis on becoming and invention in his work: ‘[A] lyric theme runs through Bergson’s work: a veritable hymn in praise of the new, the unforeseeable, of invention, of liberty’ (2004, pp. 30–31). For Deleuze, strongly opposed to total philosophical systems of Plato, Aristotle or Hegel, empiricism is a philosophy of freedom and creativity, enabling new conceptualizations and novel images of thinking. Expressed differently, the notions of the new, or of becoming, or of emergence, novelty, creation and creativity, are examined in different terms within an empiricist tradition of thinking than in a rationalist model. For James, radical empiricism needs to move beyond the conceptual schemes imposed by previous thinking, constituting a canon that may hinder novel ideas and new images of thought. For Deleuze, transcendental empiricism is aiming at understanding the pro© 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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duction of multiplicities, the constitution of new entities composed of various components. In both programmes, abstract, universal and transcendental categories are no longer privileged in the analysis but, on the contrary, the local, emergent and creative aspects of things are favoured. In this ontological and epistemological perspective, the notion of creativity is becoming something of a truism, as that which is always already in place. There are no isolated or confined pockets of creativity amidst fields of fixed universal positions and entities, but creativity and creation is what is everywhere, enabling the becoming of events and entities. In a world wherein creation is the norm rather than the exception, the state of things rather than its radical overturning, the predominant view of creativity as a remarkable and extraordinary event or occurrence would not persist. Therefore, the literature on organizational creativity is feeding on rational thinking rather than the forms of empiricism advocated by James and Deleuze. The belief in creativity as that which is disruptive and representing a point of bifurcation cannot be of empiricist origin.
The Social and Cultural Embeddednes of Creativity The literature on organization creativity is the corpus that invests the most energy and prestige in the notion of the new and the novel. In this corpus of text, organizations are portrayed as socially embedded configurations aimed at providing a continuous output of new ideas, concepts, products and collaborations between individuals. Strati points at this privileged status of the ‘creative organization’: ‘When we study people’s creativity . . . we observe organizational forms very different from those to which we have been accustomed by the dominant Taylorist and Fordist models’ (1999, p. 176). Being located beyond the Taylorist and Fordist régimes of production, creativity is the New Atlantis for creativity management writers. Besides being ideologically embedded in terms of demonstrating and endorsing a strong belief in both the ontological possibilities for creating the new and the social benefits from such an undertaking, the organization creativity literature remains overtly silent in terms of the social costs and consequences of creativity. Creativity is in other words regarded a common good, a free resource awaiting to be explored and exploited, not entailing any additional social costs beside the mere time of the creative person, team or community. There is no
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emphasis on creativity as being part of a broader political economy of innovation including the conventional trade-offs, negotiations and political games of organized activities. In this view, the organization creativity literature underrates the social embeddedness of creativity. In comparison with, for instance, studies of science-based innovation, which stresses the political and cultural embedding of the social production of scientific facts and theories (see e.g. Knorr Cetina, 1999; Traweek, 1988), the organization creativity literature has not yet fully examined the texture of interrelated practices, actions, decisions and forms of exclusion that is constituting creativity and the production of novel ideas and commodities. Even the most creative people in history, great innovators such as Thomas Alva Edison (see Akrich, Callon & Latour, 2002; Hargadon & Douglas, 2001) and scientists such Albert Einstein – generally regarded an impersonation of creative thinking – and eminent mathematicians such as Henri Poincaré (1996), agree that the act of creation is an ephemeral and transient event, often not even possible to locate in one single moment in time. Instead, creative thinking is a by-product of work within a particular domain of thinking rather than a precursor. The physicist David Bohm argues: ‘[o]riginality and creativity begin to emerge, not as something that is the result of an effects to achieve a planned and formulated goal, but rather as a by-product of a mind that is coming to a more nearly normal order of operation’ (1998, p. 26). Osbourne (2003) discusses creativity in the work of the French artist Paul Cézanne as what is inextricably entangled with training and repetition; For Osbourne (2003), mastery grows with repetition, not with ‘extraordinary’ cognitive powers: In Cézanne we have the idea of inventiveness deployed without need for the concept – as opposed to the word, which does of course appear on occasion – of creativity. Inventiveness comes through work. None of this has anything to do with psychological powers of creativity. Plenty of people have those. But not everyone is Cézanne. Work involves repetition. Not repetition of the same activity, repetition in the name not just of seeking an answer to something but of locating, deepening, embellishing a problem: in painting, Chardin’s repeated focusing on a few grapes, Giorgio Morandi’s endless little bottles arranged and rearranged on a shelf, Cézanne’s own obsessive preoccupation with the capture of nature. (Osbourne, 2003, p. 520)
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Creativity is what emerges from persistent engagement within a field. In Rabinow’s (1996) study of the development of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), a breakthrough innovation in the domain of genomics that was later rewarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993 and today constitutes one of the backbone methods in genomics research, Rabinow points at two major social innovations as the drivers for a biotechnology industry in the USA. First, the overcoming of the distinction – created and maintained by the scientists themselves – between basic and applied research helped creating a more positive view of new sources for financing research projects. In addition, the access to venture capital was the second factor behind the emergence of a biotechnology industry. The acceptance of venture capital as a legitimate source of funding among scientists was then one of the most significant, albeit seemingly mundane, contributions to the emerging field of biotechnology. Speaking in terms of an empiricist view of creativity in biotechnology, Rabinow’s ethnography of PCR strongly emphasizes the economic, political, social and cultural embedding of the scientific work. In addition, the long and demanding work from idea to a broader recognition in the community of biomedicine researchers implied a number of conflicts making former colleagues become alienated and cynical. One of the scientists working on the PCR, Henry Erlich, who thought that his and his colleagues’ contribution to the scientific breakthrough was not sufficiently credited, argued: ‘Committees and science journalists like the idea of associating a unique idea with a unique person, the lone genius. PCR is, in fact, one of the classic examples of teamwork’ (Henry Erlich, cited in Rabinow, 1996, p. 161). In a rationalist view of creativity, the conflicts of interests (e.g. science versus market opportunities), interpersonal conflicts or the failure of joint recognition for a contribution as in the case of Henry Erlich are not central to the process of creativity per se, but are merely the influence of imperfect human beings disturbing or even disrupting the process of creation through their short-sighted concerns and their human-all-to-human worries and interest. In the empiricist view, the PCR breakthrough is, on the contrary, what is very much composed of a variety of activities, actions, beliefs, ideas, technologies, material resources, conflicts, meetings, communication and whatever resources are mobilized and engaged in the course of action. Conflicts of interests and breakdowns in communication are then not only what Perrow (1984) in another context © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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called ‘normal accidents’, but may also be what is making a fruitful contribution to the process. Empiricism does not distinguish between the high standing and the productive and the low-standing and counterproductive, but is bringing all components of the multiplicity of creation into the analysis. In fact, there are no ‘final theory’ or ‘ultimate experiment’ but theory and empirical studies are always unfolding new possibilities (Dupré, 1993; Feyerabend, 1999). Stengers writes: ‘The location of a particular assemblage never constitutes an ultimate or complete explanation; assemblages are connected together in multiple ways and create communications between what is classically distinguished as different levels of explanations’ (1997, p. 204). As a consequence, science-based work and creativity are never reducible to a level of unification. The assemblage of theories and experiments leads of necessity further into new domains and new questions to be answered or answers to be connected to questions. Therefore, any ethnographic work on scientific practice or any other creative undertaking, in a laboratory or in the field, is of necessity drawing on an empiricist ontology and epistemology capable of recognizing the heterogeneity of entities and events in the act of creation, or, rather, the series of acts over time that ex post facto may be regarded as what is a manifestation of creativity.
Discussion Creativity is, as most scientists and inventors know, not always acknowledged as such at the time when the work presented, but is often becoming so en route and under the test of time (Weber, 1948). Creativity is above all what is regarded so by peers; no creativity subsists in a vacuum. Le Corbusier exemplifies: ‘Look at the case of Picasso, he fought for 50 years, and today he has become the lighthouse of modern painting. Look at the “The Rite of Spring” by Stravinsky, booed for hours’ (Le Corbusier, cited in Trieb, 1996, p. 193). A theory of the new and of novelty needs to take into account the distributed and socially embedded nature of creativity. In the empiricist view advocated by James and Deleuze, creativity is what is happening amidst the mundane activities of everyday work life, in the day-to-day tinkering of the practicing scientist (Knorr Cetina, 1981). Bringing together a number of resources into a functional multiplicity is the best the practising scientist can hope for. Breakthrough contributions are always the outcome from the interaction of hard work with material, intangible and cognitive resources (Hacking, 1992; © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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Pickering, 1995) rather than the bringing of transcendental universals into being. In an empiricist tradition of thinking, novelty is restlessly produced in every instant, but in the creativity literature it is not recognized as such. This empiricist perspective emphasizing processes of creation is in opposition with the transcendental tradition inherent to the ideology of the organization creativity discourse. One may sketch two parallel lines of theorizing in the field of organization creativity: one tradition wherein creation is an exceptional event and thus needs to be examined as such; and one tradition wherein creation is occurring everywhere, but where only a tiny fraction or subset of such creations are recognized as being of substantial significance. In the first view, creation is a sacred and extraordinary moment; in the other view, reality is in a perpetual state of becoming and only certain innovations are recognized and brought to our recognition. The question ‘How is creativity to be managed?’ dominates the organization creativity literature. A meta-theoretical perspective on creativity would open up for alternative formulations of this generic theme: ‘What are the conditions under which we regard an event or an act as being creative?’, or ‘What are the assumptions underlying the very idea of creativity?’. Such meta-theoretical orientation of the field would imply a step back from practice in the short run, but in the long run, practical concerns regarding organization creativity would benefit from a broader research agenda anchored in ontological and epistemological discussions. Although organization creativity literature has made some fruitful contributions to organization theory, the literature is still, in comparison to research on for instance knowledge management or organization learning, too disjointed and dispersed to make a broader impact on the field. In addition, a certain faddishness surrounds the idea of creativity, and such anxieties regarding the long-term effects of the research programme are preferably dealt with through more detailed examinations of the various assumptions of the research programme. Therefore, recognizing ontology and epistemology is not representing a withdrawal from the domain of practice and managerial interests, but is, on the contrary, a means for reinforcing the empirical orientation of studies of creativity work in organizations. The philosophies of James and Deleuze represent a long-standing tradition of empiricist thinking that has been merely scratched on the surface in this article. One must not mistake philosophy for social theory and think of philosophical traditions as being possible to
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fully integrate and delineate into unified systems of thought. Thus there is no one single empiricist tradition of thinking, but instead there are a number of alternative perspectives and conceptual frameworks coexist. As Deleuze points out, philosophers as diverse as Hume, Spinoza, Nietzsche and Bergson share a number of intersecting empiricist themes and interests. Therefore, a more detailed engagement with empiricist thinking must recognize the diversity of the philosophical canon. Recognizing the ontological and epistemological aspects of creative work may, however, open up for alternative perspectives and new domains of thinking.
Conclusion In summary, there are three aspects of creativity management and innovation management that need to be critically evaluated: (1) The notions of the new and novelty are in fact not the central component of creativity; instead notions such as connectivity, associations, assemblages and multiplicities point at the combinatory nature of creativity. Creativity is an act making connections and constituting hybrids and is not primarily what is begetting the new. (2) Creativity is not simply based on isolated, extraordinary acts of ‘creation’ but is also socially and culturally embedded, and dependant on the outcomes from negotiations, collaborations and networking among individuals or groups of individuals. Creativity is a social accomplishment rather than an individual act. (3) An empiricist tradition of thinking, here represented by William James and Gilles Deleuze, recognizes creativity as a series of connections and associations while a rationalist tradition of thinking formulates other views of creativity. Empiricism does not detach the creative act or event from the turmoil of everyday life, but is instead stressing the activities and heterogeneity in the resources being employed in creative work. The future organization creativity literature may abandon the predominant rationalist mode of thinking and adopt an empiricist view of creation.
References Adorno, T.W. (2000) Introduction to Sociology. Polity Press, Cambridge. Akrich, M., Callon, M. and Latour, B. (2002) The key success in innovation part II: the art of choosing
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good spokespersons. International Journal of Innovation Management, 6(2), 206–25. Amabile, T.M. (1997) Motivating creativity in organizations: On doing what you love and loving what you do, California Management Review, 40(1), 39–58. Amabile, T.M., Conti, R., Coon, H., Lasenby, J. and Herron, M. (1996) Assessing the work environment for creativity. Academy of Management Journal, 39(5), 1154–84. Amabile, T.M. and Conti, R. (1999) Changes in the work environment for creativity during downsizing. Academy of Management Journal, 42(6), 630–40. Andriopoulos, C. (2001) Determinants of organisational creativity: A literature review. Management Decision, 39(10), 834–40. Ansell Pearson, K. (2002) Philosophy and the Adventures of the Virtual: Bergson and the Time of Life. Routledge, London. Baugh, B. (2001) Deleuze and empiricism. In Genosko, G. (ed.), Deleuze and Guattari: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers, Vol.1. Routledge, London. Bergson, H. (1998) Creative Evolution. Dover Publishers, Mineola. Boden, M.A., ed. (1996) Dimensions of Creativity. MIT Press, Cambridge MA. Bohm, D. (1998) On Creativity, ed. L. Nichol. Rouledge, London. Deleuze, G. (1988) Bergsonism. Zone Books, New York. Deleuze, G. (1990) Logic of Sense. Athlone Press, London. Deleuze, G. (1991) Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume’s Theory of Human Nature. Columbia University Press, New York. Deleuze, G. (1994) Difference and Repetition. Athlone Press, London. Deleuze, G. and Parnet, C. (2002) Dialogues II. Continuum London. Deleuze, G. (2004) Desert Islands and Other Texts, 1953–1994, ed. D. Lapoujade, trans. by M. Taormina. Semiotext[e], New York. Dupré, J. (1993) The Disorder of Things: Metaphyical Foundations of the Disunity of Science. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA. Feyerabend, P. (1999) Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction versus Richness of Being. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Hacking, I. (1992) The self-vindicating of the laboratory sciences. In Pickering, A., ed., (1992), Science as Practice and Culture. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Hargadon, A.B. and Douglas, Y. (2001) When innovations meet institutions: Edison and the design of the electric light. Administrative Science Quarterly, 46, 476–501. James, W. (1912) Essays in Radical Empiricism. Longmans, Green & Co, New York. Jeffcut, P. (2000) Management and the Creative Industries. Studies in Cultures, Organizations and Societies, 6, 123–27. Knorr Cetina, K.D. (1981) The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science. Pergamon Press, Oxford. © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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Knorr Cetina, K. (1999) Epistemic Cultures: How Sciences Make Knowledge. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA. Linstead, S. and Mullarkey, J. (2003) Time, creativity and culture: Introducing Bergson. Culture and Organization, 9(1), 3–13. Madjar, N., Oldham, G.R. and Pratt, M.G. (2002) There’s no place like home? The contributions of work and nonwork creativity support to employees’ creative performance. Academy of Management Journal, 45(4), 757–67. Nyström, H. (2000) The postmodern challenge: from economic to creative management. Creativity and Innovation Management, 9(2), 109–14. Oldham, G.R. and Cummings, A. (1996) Employee creativity: personal and contextual factors at work. Academy of Management Review, 39(3), 607– 34. Olkowski, D. (1999) Gilles Deleuze and the Ruin of Representation. University of California Press, Berkeley. Osbourne, T. (2003) Against ‘creativity’: A philistine rant. Economy and Society, 32(4), 507–25. Perrow, C. (1984) Normal Accidents. Basic Books, New York. Pickering, A. (1995) The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Plato (1996) Parmenides, trans. M.L. Gill and P. Ryan. Hackett, Indianapolis. Poincaré, H. (1996) Science and Method. Thoemmes Press, Bristol. Rabinow, P. (1996) Making PCR: A Story of Biotechnology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Stengers, I. (1997) Power and Invention: Situating Science. Minnesota University Press, Minnespolis. Strannegård, L. (2002) Nothing compares to the new. In Holmberg, I., Salzer-Mörling, M. and Strannegård, L. (eds), Stuck in the Future: Tracing
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the ‘New Economy’. Bookhouse Publishing, Stockholm. Strati, A. (1999) Organization and Aesthetics. Sage, London. Traweek, S. (1988) Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Trieb, M. (1996) Space Calculated in Seconds: The Philips Pavillion, Le Corbusier, Edgard Varèse. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Unsworth, K. (2001) Unpacking Creativity. Academy of Management Review, 26(2), 289–97. Weber, M. (1948) Science as a Vocation. In Gerth, H.H. and Wright Mills, C. (eds), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Routledge, London 129–56. Weick, K.E. and Westley, F. (1999) Organziational learning: Affirming an oxymoron. In Clegg, S.R., Hardy, C. and Nord, W.R. (eds), Managing Organizations. Sage, London. Wood, M. and Ferlie, E. (2003) Journeying from Hippocrates with Bergson and Deleuze. Organization Studies, 24(1), 47–68.
Alexander Styhre (Alexander.Styhre@ fenix.chalmers.se) is Associate Professor at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. Alexander is interested in the management of knowledge-intensive organizations and innovation work in professional organizations. Alexander has recently published Managing Creativity in Organizations (Palgrave, 2005), co-authored with Mats Sundgren.
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Creativity and Repetition Natalie Slutskaya In this paper we seek to explore the concept of the ‘new’ through enquiring into the role of the body, thus opening categories that may allow a sensing of the affective ‘new’ in organizing processes. We use various theoretical concepts such as ‘repetition’ and ‘habitual appropriation’ to look at modern dance. We aim to show how the investigation of embodied processes allows us to make links between the old and the new, the creative and the unimaginative, and ultimately may help us to generate an infinite array of creative practices.
odern dance might seem like an unusual choice for an analogous model, but it allows us to re-evaluate a number of dimensions in the relationship between the body and organization. Our attention to the dance movement – as well as attention to the actual movement of the natural world – can together indicate a provisionally new ‘world view’ (Bohm, 2004, p. 90) that argues for the primacy of practical over reflective forms of being:
M
Scientific thinking, a thinking which looks on from above and thinks of the object-ingeneral, must return to the ‘there is’ which underlies it; to the site, the soil of the sensible and opened world such as it is in our life and for our body – not that possible body which we may legitimately think of as an information machine but that actual body that I call mine . . . In this primordial historicity, science’s agile and improvisatory thought will learn to ground itself upon things themselves and upon itself (Merleau-Ponty, 2004, p. 293)
Body and Organization The body is a largely neglected component of organizational practices (Hassard, Holliday & Willmott, 2000). Organizations cannot just be studied by looking into symbolic interactions; there is also a need to investigate the use of bodies, as tangible organizational resources (Bahnish 2000; Holliday & Thompson 2001). There are a number of organizational activities and experiences that draw on the human
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body: the experience of stress (Meyerson, 1998; Newton, 1995), unequal treatment of individuals on the basis of race or ethnicity (Lynch, 1997; Nkomo, 1992), embodied performances (Rafaeli et al., 1997; Trethewey, 1999). Many organizational practices remain undertheorized because there is little theoretical development in organization theory on embodiment (Styhre, 2004). Not only is there a call for developing an integrated theoretical framework to study the use of human bodies in organization practices but also for exploring how embodied principles of social organization can be used in generating creative and innovative practices. Shilling (1993) describes the attention to the body in the study of the social world and organization as an absent present. That is, the existence of human bodies tends to be taken for granted in analyses of organizational practices; these analyses assume but rarely examine how social practices are embodied. Knowledge of the body is often mediated through the abstraction of representation of the body, with the body continually displaced by language. All other knowledges – nonlinguistic, sensory and spiritual – are thus subjugated and dissociated (Casey, 2000). Exploring the relationship between body and organization would give some greater texture to the silenced areas of organizational processes which, where they are studied, are often deprived of their energy, frozen in time and solidified (Linstead, 2000). Though the ways in which members of an organization live and use their bodies, both in and outside work, implies that their bodies might be understood as complicated sites that powerful discourses © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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inform, affect and construct in various ways (Brewis & Sinclair, 2000), we have to be careful in applying a solely discursive approach to organizational practices. Shilling (1993) emphasizes the importance and difficulty of grasping the material body because its existence is permanently deferred behind the grids of meaning imposed by discourse. He continues by criticizing what he calls ‘discursive essentialism’ and claims that ‘the body may be surrounded by and perceived through discourses, but it is irreducible to discourse’ (1993, p. 81). Thus, there are pre-discursive bodies as such. We intend to discuss an embodied view of the organization that does not rely solely on a discursivization of organizational activities, but acknowledges the human body as a key entity in organization life. We intend to depart from the intellectualist, discursive view of organizations and the human body and to discuss the human body as the primary site capable of generating creative and innovative practices. In short, we seek to theorize what Grosz (1994) calls the ‘lived body’ rather than looking into the technoadministrative use of bodies in organizations. The ‘lived body’ is made of the same material as the world, and moreover, the ‘lived body’ is shared by the world, the world reflects it, encroaches upon it and it encroaches upon the world (Merleau-Ponty, 2004). But they overlap in a most peculiar way. Rather than arrogantly exploring the world around us, our senses reach out to the world, respond to it, actively engage with it, shape and configure it – just as the world, at the same time, reaches into the depths of our sensual being. Investigating the concept of the ‘lived body’ in the world allows us to realize that the meaning of the world is constructed from the vantage point of our uniquely embodied viewpoint, and hence is irreducibly pluralistic. As such, the world is best understood as a wholeness open to a horizon of an indefinite number of perspectives that blend and contradict with one another at the same time (Merleau-Ponty, 2004). Bakhtin shares Merleau-Ponty’s views on the importance of incorporating bodiliness in our understanding of social practices (Gardiner, 1998). The ability to recognize gestures and facial expressions, co-mingling of self and other, is ultimately what leads to a genuinely dialogic encounter (Bakhtin, 1984). Neither for Merleau-Ponty nor for Bakhtin is there a convincing reason why a ‘unified truth’ cannot be expressed through a plurality of overlapping perspectives and viewpoints, rather than through the monocular perspective of a disembodied observer. © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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Body Dances: The Nature of Movement Modern dance serves as a good example of thinking with/through the entire body. Here the body is the locus of social relations, its sensual and perceptual experience moulded by cultural and historical circumstances. The novelty and attraction of using modern dance as an analytical model is based on two assumptions. First, dance, being a mainly nonverbal or pre-verbal practice, bypasses language in its signifying practices; second, being grounded in the body, dance provides access to that which is suppressed or unspoken in culture. Modern dance denies existing conventions; it is known for its capacity to exceed, escape, defy, or threaten existing order but also for requiring structure, training and discipline as a pre-condition. Bare negation is completely alien to any form of dance. It is the creative intelligence of dance characterized as gratuitous, non-cumulative, structured, rule-bound and yet difficult to control that we are particularly interested in. To understand where this capacity of modern dance comes from we need to look at the nature of body movement. Movement is a habitual function of the body; it gives shape to all forms. Habitus in its turn gives order to movement. Human movement uses paths that naturally follow the physiognomy of the body. Habitual appropriation involves a modification and enlargement of the corporeal schema through repetition, a development of new principles of movement and know-how that permit new forms of body knowledge. In this sense habitual appropriation admits to a great deal of improvization, as the skilled dancer illustrates. Being a habitual function, movement bears an intrinsic possibility of being repeated and copied. The creative potential of repetition and habitual appropriation lies in their main paradoxical characteristic. Repetition must exist and not exist at the same time. We can say ‘it happened again’, holding that all elements of the ‘it’ and the ‘happened’ were the same, yet the event has taken part in the ongoingness of time and space and thus is never the same event. The only conclusion is that on the one hand repetition is itself a self-generating and self-perpetuating event, but on the other hand it gives us a sense of stability and structure by returning to a beginning precisely because repetition is always involved in giving integrity to what is repeated (Stuart, 1980). Repetition also establishes a structural code from which any variation can be marked, providing us with a feeling of familiarity and recogni-
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tion. What we are particularly interested in is to explore how repetition of dance movement creates, maintains and ultimately dissolves structure. To give some texture to our argument we will look at the improvization forms developed by Barbara Dilley, Dana Reitz and Ruth Zaporah. We intend to explore how rigid structure can be freed and at the same time how setting boundaries and limiting options make possibilities for creating something new. As we are not dance scholars, we have chosen Louise Steinman and Ruth Zaporah as our guide into the world of modern dance, both because of their impressive knowledge of it and because of their personal experience teaching modern dance and improvizational techniques. Improvization is a process by which the evolving nature of the world around and within the artists is revealed by their action (Steinman, 1995). Improvization is often described as a form of immediacy, a discipline of spontaneity and awareness. In the past 50 years, there has been an increase in improvization by performing artists. Since the 1960s, when all the frontiers of consciousness were explored for their creative power, the act of performing improvization became a ‘guaranteed ride full of this wild taste of spontaneous delight’ (Zaporah, 1995, p. 17). The challenge and the fascination of the new approach appealed to the founders of the Grand Union, a first improvizational performance group. This group included Ruth Zaporah, Nina Wise, Barbara Dilley, Ken Jenkins, and Deborah Slate. They joined the group in the attempt to overcome what they saw as the limitations of modern dance at that time. ‘You didn’t see people, you just saw bodies’ (Steinman, 1995, p. 79). The first experiences of improvization were closely linked to the sense of new possibilities and discoveries. They abandoned the structured form of choreography and scripted theatre. The performers arrived for the performance without previous agreement of theme or format. Grand Union has been described as danse verité where everything was shown: the tiredness, the confusion and the tension. But the genuine commitment with which they pulled through difficult moments, and the unexpected brilliance of body movements, seemed to have had potent value for many audience members ‘coping, in creating an art so vividly a semblance of the pattern made by their own daily indecisions and little triumphs’ (Steinman, 1995, p. 80). Unfortunately Grand Union soon suffered its demise. There were a number of problems. The performances became chaotic and self-
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indulgent. The pressures of performing ‘on the spot’ were excessive. They did not have time to prepare their conception of a work to the best of their ability, to perfect a statement without having to worry about trivial things like nerves and slips. Not every dancer had the capability to face those ‘awful, degrading and humanly damaging uncertainties which the concert brings with it’. The dancers were frustrated by ‘all the waiting around for something to happen’ (Steinman, 1995, p. 81) in performances. There were still ‘moments’, but there was also according to many, a lot of waiting around, and little passion and commitment by the end. The dancers often felt demeaned. Gradually, the participants of these improvizational performances on both East and West Coasts went off to define their own ways. There was an urgent need to find the delicate balance between the technique and inspiration, control and release, containment and freedom. Modern dance is informed from and by one’s own body. Quietude was necessary in order to ‘listen’ to the body again. The ‘turning inwards’ in the attempt to understand how a dancer can use his or her body to deal with improvizational forces that continually upset order was essential in the attempt to refine improvization as a performance practice. The dancer’s body exists, as it were, beyond itself, in a living impulse towards some new embodied understanding. If dancers totally detach themselves from this impulse, all they have left is the naked body from which neither dancers nor audience could learn anything. What is particularly interesting about the above mentioned is that having participated in more than one value system (choreographed dance, improvizational dance), dancers’ bodies become ‘dialogized’ (Bakhtin, 1984), questioned, disputed, retrained and reformed. There were a number of questions that dancers had to answer in their own ways. How to be available to the flow of the moment and how to structure, instantaneously, its passage through oneself? Are there any structures for spontaneity? How can this potentially endless process of re-questioning and redialogizing the body become a driving force in creating the new and unexpected? The realization that structure might have the potential to ignite spontaneity, that limits can yield intensity, and commitment to a set of rules can free a dance to attain a profundity and vigour made Barbara Dilley create different improvizational forms. We will investigate just one of those forms described in Louise Steinman’s book The Knowing Body, in order to illustrate our argument. © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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Follow the Leader One of the improvization forms Barbara Dilley works with is an offshoot of the child’s game ‘follow-the-leader’. A leader gains followers simply by saying, ‘follow me’. Followers choose where they will follow in the space, if they will follow simultaneously or as an echo. They may even change the movement or perform a variation. But the decision must be immediate. To add even more structure to the performance, so-called ‘corridors’ are introduced. The performers move along parallel lanes of space. Movement in corridors is often restricted to a few options like walking, turning, arms swinging; in other words very habitual and mundane movements. In follow-theleader, the range of movement may include extremely small gestures such as wigglings, quivers and stamps. There may also be long periods of stillness. There is no pressure to remember steps or timing, to come up with sophisticated steps, or to perform technically difficult steps without practising them in advance. What it requires is just to be present in the moment of each decision, to sense the time of the whole composition as it is happening and to use what is already there available to the dancers. There is also the possibility to not follow, to stay with the movement one is already doing. This game in many ways reveals the nature of embodied movement. It starts with dancers simply doing the same thing and at the same time. Dancers are repeating an event over and over again, and they are also urged to approach it each time as if it were ‘the first time’. It creates an energy that both extends on one hand and relaxes on the other. A dancer relaxes when imitation and repetition are going on. It does not involve any thinking, and in that process of relaxing through repetition a dancer starts to feel a larger thing happening: decisions can then be based on the whole. Speed is often introduced in order to help dancers bypass the analytical/ protective thinking mechanisms. The introduction of repetition and habitual movement changes the nature of the movement selection dancers have to make. The choice becomes habitual, every act of improvement/change acknowledges and repeats the original movement, which was not one of taste but one of insight.
The Invisible within Habitus The introduction of repetition, the copying/ following technique and habitual movement improvize a shelter built of habits, the raw material of repetition. The expressiveness of © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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the dance comes not just from the steps but also from postures, gestures and facial expressions. Any dance has its own certain dance technique and vocabulary. However, within this overall structure it reveals numerous elements that are derived from everyday life and are thus shared by a society as a whole. Gestural and facial communication reveals the habitual aspect of the dance. The habits imply the whole range of gestures, movements, actions, postures and facial expressions. Stage and physical objects supply the scene, the site of the habit, and yet it is not they but the habit that protects and provides a shelter (Berger, 1984). The dignity and clarity of group movement is achieved through sharing a common movement background, years of training and performing together in different contexts. Being the product of collective history and a collective body, dance is an open system of dancers’ experiences fashioned by the habitus.1 It is because the body has become a repository of ingrained dispositions that certain actions, certain ways of behaving and responding, seem altogether natural. The practical schemes through which the body is organized are the product of history and, at the same time, the source of practices and perceptions that reproduce that history (Bourdieu, 1990). The individual movements of a dancer are analogous to the brushstroke of an artist – the gesture reveals the inner moment. One is committed to that stroke: That moment can’t be repeated, but it is a trained moment, it is prepared for, and comes out of everything that has happened before (Steinman, 1995, p. 85) Habitual movements are durable but not eternal. They are constantly subjected to changes, constantly affected by them in a way that either reinforces or modifies the dance structure. The relation that is obtained between the dance and its social field is a sort of ontological complicity, a subconscious and pre-reflexive fit. This complicity manifests itself in what we call feel for the dance, an intentionality without intention, functionality without rational 1 Habitus is a Latin word that refers to a habitual or typical condition, state or appearance, particularly of the body (Jenkins, 1992). Bourdieu retains some of the concept’s original meanings: ‘Habitus is the durable and transposable systems of schemata of perception, appreciation, and action that result from the institution of the social in the body. It contributes to constituting the field as a meaningful world, a world endowed with sense and value, in which it is worth investing one’s energy’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 99).
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computation and the conscious positing of ends. Dancers possess a practical mastery of the implicit principles of the dance, not the symbolic mastery of explicit, consciously recognized rules. Bourdieu (1990) calls this le sense pratique. Practical sense is an inherent part of ‘feel for the game’. Since this dance lacks choreography it captures the pragmatic sense of possibility inherent in game situations of ‘going-on’. It lacks the intentional action shaping the resulting totality; the total outcome is anything but the sum of total intentions at the level of dancers. This process of creative becoming can be described in Bakhtin’s terms. The dance becomes an ongoing, unfinalizable dialogue that takes place at every moment (Bakhtin, 1984). The dancing body is in constant motion. It is always active, its movement is not limited to submitting passively to space and time; it actually measures these and takes them up in their basic significance. Dancers reveal the ability to foresee the space in order to maintain a certain rhythmic unity. Dance applies itself to space like a hand to an instrument. The dancers situate themselves within ‘real activity as such’, that is, in the practical relation to the world, the preoccupied, active presence in the world with its urgencies, which directly govern movements (Morris, 2001). According to Bourdieu, practical sense is not a ‘state of mind’, nor an arbitrary set of dogmas and doctrines, but rather a state of the body. It is reinforced by the historical learning and treats the body as a ‘living memory pad, an automation that leads the mind unconsciously along with it’ (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 68). Body memory becomes the mortar, which holds the improvization piece together and determines a practice or set of practices (Crossley, 2001). These practices, shared but not imposed, offer in their repetition more permanence than any normative categories. In the form of improvizational dance developed by Barbara Dilley, habitus shared by dancers can function as ‘a structuring structure’. It can be seen as a generator and an organizer of improvization practices that are then adapted to the expected outcomes without a complete or conscious mastery of the operations necessary to achieve the dance goal. Being shared, habitus produces not just individual practices but also collective practices of the whole dance group. It ensures the active presence of their past training and performance experiences, which deposited in each dancer in the form of certain body movements guarantees the ‘structure’ of improvization practices and their constancy over time more reliably than formal rules and explicit norms. The conditioned and conditional freedom
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habitus provides removes any possibility of totally chaotic creation. In this particular example, dance order is induced by the possibilities and impossibilities, freedoms and necessities, opportunities and prohibitions inscribed in the objective conditions of the performance. The dance set-up generates individual movements that are objectively compatible with the performance conditions and in a sense re-adapted to realization of the original dance idea. The most improbable movements are excluded as unthinkable. The encounter between the habitus and a social field also reinforces the possibility of the near-perfect anticipation of the future development of the dance. This ‘feel for the game’ reveals itself in a capacity for practical anticipation of the upcoming steps and movements contained in the present. Indeed, one only has to suspend the commitment to the game that is implied in the feel for the game in order to reduce the world, and actions performed in it, to absurdity, and to bring up questions about the meaning of the world and existence which people never ask when they are caught up in the game. (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 67) In a dance, the field is clearly seen for what it is: an arbitrary social construct, an artifact whose arbitrariness and artificiality are underlined by everything that defines its autonomy. That is the reason why one does not embark on the game by a conscious act, one is united with the dance through familiar patterns of habitual appropriation and repetition. The commitment and investment are made more total and unconditional by the fact that dancers are unaware of what it is. Dancers are not driven by a unitary system of imposed rules. On the contrary, the unawareness transforms the dance into an ongoing and ever unfinished project that does have its own means to oppose the essential messiness of the world. Habitus and repetition satisfy the natural drive for unity without attempting to create order by positing it.
The Strategy of Mimesis Before we conclude, we want to address one more issue. The improvizational form described above starts with a group of dancers miming or mirroring a solo dancer. Does entering the mirroring game allow dancers to set aside their pre-determined judgements and emotions about the actions they carry out? What is the role of mimesis in creating ‘the new’? Mimesis refers to the activity of mim© 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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ing, copying or imitating. Taussig (1993) suggests that human beings are inescapably both mimetic and social; they learn by imitating others (both as a part of childhood learning and through professional training); they participate (for better or worse) in the nature of their models. Mimesis is a trend deep-rooted in living beings. Any improvizational form of dance encourages practical mimesis. It does not just presuppose a conscious effort to reproduce a gesture or a movement explicitly constituted as a model, but also implies a practical reactivation that tends to take place below the level of consciousness. The goal is to make the body believe in what it plays at. It does not represent what it performs, it does not memorize the past, it enacts the past, bringing it back to life (Bourdieu, 1990). In Bourdieu’s understanding mimesis offers us a prospect for sensuous knowledge by emphasizing that moment of knowing when an individual finds the abstract from ready-made by generating a sense of sensuous immediacy. The sensuous moment of knowing includes yielding and mirroring on the knower in the unknown. Mimesis creates the environment in which dancers can lose themselves, instead of playing an active role in it. Here the yielding component of mimesis can be perceived in a passive, even frightening sort of way: the self losing itself, sinking and decomposing into the surrounding world. But yielding, despite apparent passivity, is an active act of contact. Mimesis becomes a strange and fascinating mixture of activity and passivity involved in yielding-knowing, in this bodily mirroring of otherness (Taussig, 1993). Paradoxically, that what makes a copy magically effective is not the point-for-point correspondences of body part to body part, movement to movement; rather it is the belief of a dancer that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it. What generate the acts of contact are the material connections (habitus, common training, shared performing experience). Dancers who have been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed. It is important to note that in the mimetic process the imitating dancer affects the original to such a degree that the representation shares in and acquires the properties of the represented. The creatively effective copy is not, so to speak, much of a copy: ‘Strong desire always creates for itself’ (Taussig, 1993, p. 51). The process of mimesis is therefore a twofold play between copying of an ‘original’ and the more bodily and sensuous contact with the original. In order to participate in this mimetic play of copy and contact, one must mimic something other than oneself. ‘Pulling you this © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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way and that, mimesis plays this trick of dancing between the very same and the very different’ (Taussig, 1993, p. 129). In the process of mimesis, dancers open out by responding to the other which allows them to re-dialogize their bodies and to engage in creating difference out of the sameness providing us with the sense of ‘insurpassable plentitude’ (MerleauPonty, 2004, p. 279).
Conclusion Our article attempts to depart from the ‘discursive turn’ in organization studies, suggesting that this turn has cut us off from much that is most interesting about human practices, notably their embodied and situated nature. Through the example of modern dance we moved beyond traditional explorations of techno-administrative uses of bodies in organizations to the development of a more relational approach between the body and organizing processes. Our examination of the positive and generative power of ‘repetition’ stands in contrast to traditional approaches in management studies, which see it as restricting creativity and innovation, and thus as a disposition that has to be overcome.
References Bakhtin, M.M. (1984) Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Bahnish, M. (2000) Embodied work, divided labour: subjectivity and the scientific management of the body in Frederick W. Taylor’s ‘Lecture on Management’. Body and Society, 6(2), 51–68. Berger, J. (1984) And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos. Vintage International, New York. Bohm, D. (2004) On Creativity. Routledge, London. Bourdieu, P. (1990) The logic of practice. Polity Press, Cambridge. Brewis, J. and Sinclair, J. (2000) Exploring Embodiment: Women, Biology and Work. In Hassard, J., Holliday, R. and Willmott, H. (ed.), Body and Organization. Sage Publications, London. Casey, C. (2000) Sociology Sensing the Body: Revitalizing a Dissociative Discourse. In Hassard, J., Holliday, R. and Willmott, H. (ed.), Body and Organization. Sage Publications, London. Crossley, N. (2001) The phenomenological habitus and its construction. Theory and Society, 30, 81– 120. Gardiner, M. (1998) ‘The incomparable monster of solipsism’: Bakhtin and Merleau-Ponty. In Bell, M.M. and Gardiner, G. (eds.), Bakhtin and the human sciences. Sage, London. Grosz, E. (1994). Volatile bodies. Towards a corporeal feminism. Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Hassard, J., Holliday, R. and Willmott, H. (eds) (2000) Body and Organization. Sage, London.
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Holliday, R. and Thompson, G. (2001) The body of work. In Holliday, R. and Hassard, J. (eds.), Contested Bodies. Routledge, London. Jenkins, R. (1992) Pierre Bourdieu. Routledge, London. Linstead, S. (2000) Dangerous Fluids and the Organization-without-Organs. In Hassard, J., Holliday, R. and Willmott, H. (ed.), Body and Organization. Sage Publications, London. Lynch, F. (1997) The Diversity Machine: The Drive to Change the ‘White Male Workplace’. The Free Press, New York. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2004) Basic Writings. Routledge, London. Morris, G. (2001) Bourdieu, the body, and Graham’s post-war dance. Dance Research, 19(2), 52–83. Meyerson, D. (1998) Feeling stressed and burned out: a feminist reading and re-visioning of stress-based emotions within medicine and organization science. Organization Science, 9(1), 103–18. Newton, T. (1995) Managing Stress: Emotions and power at Work. Sage, London. Nkomo, S. (1992) The emperor has no clothes: rewriting ‘race in organizations’. Academy of Management Review, 17(3), 487–513. Rafaeli, A., Dutton, J., Harquail, C.V. and MackieLewis, S. (1997) Navigating by attire: the use of dress by female administrative employees. Academy of Management Journal, 40(1), 9–45.
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Shilling, C. (1993) The body and social theory. Sage, London. Steinman, L. (1995) The Knowing Body. North Atlantic Books, Berkeley. Stuart, S. (1980) Nonsense. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. Styhre, A. (2004) The (re)embodied organization: four perspectives on the body in organizations. Human resource Development International, 7(1), 101–16. Trethewey, A. (1999) Disciplined bodies: women’s embodied identities at work. Organization Studies, 20(3), 432–50. Taussig, M. (1993) Mimesis and Alterity. Routledge, London. Zaporah, R. (1995) Action Theatre. The Improvisation of Presence. North Atlantic Books, Berkley.
Natalia Slutskaya (
[email protected]. uk) is a Teaching Fellow in Management, University of Exeter, UK. Her research interests explore the topics of embodiment and creativity.
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The End of the Shock of the New Geoff Lightfoot, Simon Lilley and Donncha Kavanagh ‘Shock’ advertising is the new black and the subject of the reflection in which this article engages. We do this in particular through consideration of the (largely) British high-street fashion house French Connection’s seemingly endless ‘FCUK’ campaign. The obvious resonance between this abbreviation and perhaps the most popular word in the English language was at the heart of the campaign’s appeal and it continues today through various extensions on both slogans and logos on French Connection’s own goods and indeed those who seek to piggy back upon and/or subvert its market power. It is far from the only example of such ‘shock’ tactics. Whether discussing reproduction in graphic detail with children, joyously dismantling chastity, or merely fucking with fuck, it seems that traditional mores can no longer remain virgin territory, unsullied by rapacious marketing. Our mediated experiences of reaching ‘extremes’, it now appears, are not paralysing, mesmerising, fascinating or inspiring but simply a further prod down the path leading to (gleeful) purchase. In this paper we explore how, via a series of semiotic reversals, the new, the strange, the unfamiliar and the would-be shocking are rendered banal, and thus thoroughly comprehensible through brand association and the endless re-iteration of existing works.
same fcuking joke
and it’s not even funny
The exhibit above is inspired by one of the T-shirts available at http://www.burningtshirt.com/ tshirts/funny/same-fcuking-joke-and-its-not-even-funny.php (accessed 24th November 2005).
The levelling of objects to that of money reduces the subjective interest first in their specific qualities and then, as a further consequence, in the objects themselves. The production of cheap trash is, as it were, the vengeance of the objects for the fact that they have been ousted from the focal point of interest by a merely indifferent means . . . Money thoroughly destroys that selfrespect that characterises the distinguished person and becomes embedded in certain objects and their appreciation; it forces an extraneous standard upon things, a standard that is quite alien to distinction. By arranging things in a series in which only quantitative differences are valid it © 2006 The Authors Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
deprives them, on the one hand, of their difference and distance of one from another and on the other of the right to reject any relationship or any qualification by comparison with others – these are precisely the two factors whose combination determines the peculiar ideal of distinction. (Simmel, 2004, p. 394)
Advertising the New
I
n our exploration of the new we delve into that arena in which the newness of the new strives hardest to be heard, the arena of advertising. More specifically we address that form
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of advertising in which novelty expresses itself with perhaps the greatest immediacy, that of the shock. For it seems to us, that the shock is ubiquitous, and thus no longer shocking. And, by extension, similarly, that the new is perhaps no longer as new as it might once have been. The shocking and the new exist together in a curious relationship that we interrogate in what follows. We thus explore not only shock advertising but also the role of both the new and the shock in the history of art. For it is in the relationship of art to advertising that we perhaps witness most clearly the shocking fate of the new in a world in which it is so ubiquitous that it can no longer be shocking. And what could be a better place to start than with what we might see as both the most pervasive and hence least shocking deployments of shock of recent advertising times? That fcuking joke of French Connection’s.
Fcuk the System Just one more time: that fcuking joke is no longer funny. Was it ever, now we’re faced with its omnipresence: ‘fcuk fashion’, ‘fcuk fear’, ‘fcuk football’, ‘cool as fcuk’, ‘too drunk too fcuk’ and ‘fcuk it’? It is no longer even shocking, but perhaps it never was. It even seems to have become an embarrassment to its owners, as French Connection re-asserts its own identity and quietly allows fcuk to fuck off and die. Too fcuked to shock perhaps. But what can this recent departure tell us about the value of the shock? Well, the value for the advertiser is perhaps easiest to spot. As Botting makes clear in his insightful essay, Fcuk Speed: The brashness of the campaign, in repeatedly enjoining a misreading of fcuk, occupies that genre of irreverent advertising pioneered by Benetton and later by Levis, with aims of shocking the public, causing controversy and gaining valuable – and free – column inches of advertising in order to present an image bound up with associations of rebellion, freedom, and an attitude of defiance towards rules and conventions. (2004, p. 40) French Connection confirm this in their own case study of themselves (available at http:// www.fcuk.com/fcukadvertising, accessed 24 November 2005) which analyses the success of their 13 advertising campaigns between 1997 and 2003 in terms of sales increase, profit increase and number of complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority. Marketing may indeed shock and cause offence and this is clearly an objective of French Connection –
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but not always for the simple reasons that Trevor Beattie and the other gurus behind the campaign seem to envisage. It may be a joke – but it is not the obvious one based around poking fun at outdated, wearisome moral codes. ‘Fuck’ itself, let alone its banal derivative, is already a commonplace – nowadays ‘taboos against the F-word are weaker than ever’ (Scheidlower, 1999, p. xi). Indeed even this lack of shock at what would be shocking is not itself particularly new: Scheidlower tells of how a reviewer of the then new Random House dictionary in 1966 complained about the omission of ‘fuck’: ‘a stupid prudery has prevented the inclusion of probably the most widely-used word in the English language’ (Scheidlower 1999, p. xxv). Thus, the suggestions of rebellion and defiance are ambiguous at best since, following Botting (2004), it is not at all clear whether the wearer is an irreverent rebel or an acquiescent follower of corporate fashion. Now, of course, the shock of the new is itself something of a brand, and an increasingly tired brand at that. The phrase was used most famously by the art critic and historian Robert Hughes, and first came to wide attention in 1980. And even then it was already tired. It was taken from the title of a book by Ian Dunlop (1980), published eight years before Hughes adopted it, with suitable acknowledgement, as the title of his own book and BBC television series. Hughes used the phrase to indicate his broad thesis concerning the history of modern art and architecture: that the aesthetic products of the modern age were shocking and new and bore these marks as testimony to and/or critique of the shock of the new age in which they were produced. Thus, when we consider the question of whether a manufactured statement of rebellion is one that is unique to, or merely prevalent in, marketing (and particularly its shock troops of advertising), it is clear that for Hughes at least, it is not. Our diversion from the fcuk campaign to art history is deliberate and is premised on the understanding that we can understand what is happening in advertising by looking at the history of art, and in particular the history of the avant-garde. In turn, this gives an insight into wider phenomena and, specifically, into the notion of the new. Following Hughes, we see the avant-garde as an essential part of modernity, in so far as modernity is about celebrating innovation, novelty, change, etc. While the Renaissance may have provided the artistic foundations and the Enlightenment the philosophical scaffolding, modernity’s endemic restlessness was perhaps only properly recognized in the mid-nineteenth century. Tellingly, © 2006 The Authors Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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Marx presented his iconic insight that ‘all that is solid melts into air’ around this time, and the origin of the artistic avant-garde can be traced to the same period. The birth of the avant-garde is usually fixed at 17 May 1863 when a group of painters, whose work was rejected by the annual Paris Salon of officially sanctioned art, opened the Salon des Refusées in Paris. Gustave Corbet (1819–77) is commonly identified as the first representative avant-garde painter, or painter against the system, and in the historical record he is followed by a catalogue of artists that includes, inter alios, Duchamp (1887–1968), Warhol (1928– 1987), Koons (1955–), and Hirst (1965–). What links these and others in the avant-garde is their shared attempt to be so utterly novel as to shock, which necessarily positioned them as artists against the discourse within which they were embedded. Up until at least the 1930s, there was a strong belief that painting and sculpture were potent forms of social critique, and that radical art and radical politics were deeply interconnected. Gradually, however, these beliefs began to unravel. One reason was because the avant-garde ultimately turned art in on itself, corroding the essential understanding of what art is or was. Perhaps the most famous illustration of this development occurred in 1917 when Duchamp exhibited a urinal, to which he gave the title ‘Fountain’. The shock value of the piece was strong, and it was certainly novel, as it starkly addressed a profound question about the essence of art: if a urinal is art, then everything is art and if everything is art then nothing is art. The dilemma for the avantgarde, however, is that this is a single-shot shock tactic. Another urinal, or a dead pig’s head, or a cardboard box can be exhibited to make the same point, but such subsequent pieces will be neither shocking nor new. More importantly for our purposes, in seeking to fundamentally undermine the domain of art the avant-garde also axiomatically undermines the idea of the avant-garde itself, since the avant-garde is a derivative concept that depends for its existence on a primary concept – the idea that art must be understood in a teleological structure, where new and old make sense. In time, this also undermined the traditional distinction between the value of art and the price of art. As art took to the market, where its value was determined by how much cash it could be transubstantiated into, money, as Simmel so perceptively observed, forced upon it ‘a standard that is quiet alien to distinction’ (2004, p. 394). Of course, artists in the tradition of the avant-garde sought to rebel against this trend, in keeping with their raison d’être. Some © 2006 The Authors Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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sought to produce work that could not be not be sold and/or work in which saleability and its consequences for the conceptualization of art become key subject matter. Perhaps the most notable example of this was Lichtenstein (1923–97) who, in the early 1960s, tried to paint a picture so ugly that nobody would hang it, much less buy it. He was, needless to say, spectacularly unsuccessful (or perhaps spectacularly successful). For the philosopher and art critic, Arthur Danto, the consequence of this is that art (or more specifically art history) has come to an end. In our narrative, at first only mimesis was art, then several things were art but each tried to extinguish its competitors, and then, finally, it became apparent that there were no stylistic or philosophical constraints. There is no special way works of art have to be. And that is the present and, I should say, the final moment in the master narrative. It is the end of the story. (Danto, 1997, p. 47) Danto’s point (and a similar point has been made by Belting (1987) and Kuspit (2004)) is that there is no longer a progressive master narrative – i.e. no concept of the new or the old – within which art can be situated. Danto sets 1963, precisely 100 years after the advent of the avant-garde, as the end point of the story; the end not of art, but the end of the idea of the new in art. Where then lies the space for recognition of the new and the shock that announces its newness? And more particularly for our theme here, how can packaged rebellion, no matter how well it sells, retain sufficient sense of a real war on a pressing moral code to exceed its mere packaging? Certainly, the pastiches of rebellion that seemingly make up much voguish British Art, and attend to its contemporary rich and tasteless benefactors, suggest that this benign pattern can still find a place in galleries. Even perhaps the last great shock in music – punk rock – soon became an exercise in turning rebellion into money (most adroitly, as ever, announced by John Lydon on the Sex Pistols reunion concert, ‘We’re fat, we’re forty and we’re back for the money’) and latter-day rock rebels (leaving aside the shambling icons of earlier generations) now brag about their fetishistic accumulation of consumer desirables (Rehn & Sköld, 2003). It would seem that rebellion has always been a profitable area to exploit, but does its commercialization tell the whole story of its pacification? Wherein, then, the shock? What is the relationship between novelty and commerce? Can the new stay new when it is offered for sale?
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Fcuk Art. Fcuk Advertising. Fcuk Rebellion. Fcuk the New The ‘desiderata of Pop art’ (as expressed by one of its early proponents, Richard Hamilton, in 1957 – cited in Hughes, 1980, p. 344), of which of course Lichtenstein was a prime exponent, were that it should be: Popular (designed for a mass audience) Transient (short-term solution) Expendable (easily forgotten) Low-cost Mass-produced Young (aimed at youth) Witty Sexy Gimmicky Glamorous Big Business . . . The list is certainly provocative for those who would seek to defend the more classical notions of creativity that were smuggled in, and indeed celebrated with additional abandon, by early proponents of modern art. And that was precisely the (popular) point. By suggesting that even a small province of the kingdom of art could be one in which the desiderata above could be valorised, a critique was enabled and mobilized of that whole kingdom. Such a list clearly blurs distinction between advertising and art (unsurprisingly, given the explicit connections Hamilton was making) and may as obviously serve as much as a template for advertising as for Pop Art and its endless copyists. The parallel trajectories of both art and advertising seemingly reflect this. For even when we attempt to force the distinction between the two – as Hughes often does – we find them rushing back together for commerce is at centre-stage in both plots. Consider, in particular, the example of Warhol – for many the epitome of consumer art – an example that Hughes grudgingly renders as important. Because, perhaps if only because, it exposes the ‘evil’ that lies behind advertising and ‘the signs to command’ that it employs: Warhol’s work in the early sixties was a baleful mimicry of advertising, without the gloss. It was about the way advertising promises that the same pap with different labels will give you special, unrepeatable gratifications. Advertising flatters people that they have something in common with artists; the consumer is rare, discriminating, a connoisseur of sensation. If Warhol was once subversive – and in the early sixties he was – it was because he inverted the process on which successful advertising depends, becoming a famous artist who loved noth-
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ing but banality and sameness. Nothing would be left in the sphere of art except its use as a container for celebrity, and at one stroke (although it took the art world some time to realise it) the idea of the avant-garde was consigned to its social parody, the world of fashion, promotion, and commercial manipulation: a new model artwork every ten minutes. I want to be a machine: to print, to repeat, repetitiously to bring forth novelties. (1980, p. 348) Rebellion here is rendered vacuous and ripe for exploitation, but not only here. Such a cutting contribution also witnesses the beginning of the subsumption of the avant-garde in its entirety to that which it would stand against. For Warhol’s critique is of both art and commerce. Through the techniques it so artfully and viciously deploys and via its mimicry it revels in becoming part of the system from which art traditionally sought to stand apart. It delighted in becoming a mere adjunct to the production process. In this it is brutal in its baleful honesty. For art, let alone advertising, there can no longer be margins from which to stand loftily aside. Rebellion, anti-fashion, anti-art. All has become Empirically subsumed. According to Hughes, an artist such as Warhol can subversively critique advertising and indeed art itself, but because advertising has at best a parasitic relationship with art this carries with it all the dangers that parasitic relationships entail; dangers that are all the more pronounced when, through the critique, the parasite attacks the host. For, as Hughes himself is forced to admit, once we move within ‘a culture of mass-communication art can only survive in two ways: by stealth or by living in those game parks we call museums’ (1980, p. 354). And Pop Art particularly, that death knell of traditional conceptions of the purity and difference of the artistic, ‘could not survive outside the museum, since contact with a message-packed environment at once trivialised it . . . On the street, real mass culture would simply have crushed its ironizing cousin’ (1980, p. 354). What is interesting is that ‘real mass culture’ – as epitomised by advertising – is subject to much the same problematic processes that drove and consumed the idea of the avantgarde in art. Here we draw on Holt’s (2002) chronology on the history of advertising and branding, which he sees as being dialectically intertwined with the evolution of consumer culture. Holt’s story begins in first few decades of the twentieth century, when advertising was centred on either (a) educating the customer about the product’s basic value © 2006 The Authors Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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proposition, technical details, and the manufacturer’s credibility, or (b) inflating product claims on the premise that the customer was a gullible dupe. This model was replaced, from about the 1920s onwards, with the ‘modern branding paradigm’ wherein products and brands were seen as materially embodying people’s social and moral ideals. Rather than focusing on a product’s functional attributes, modern branding gurus sought to develop a brand ‘image’ that embodied psychological and social properties. Moreover, modern branding had a paternalistic dimension insofar as advertisers were selling a set of social values about the nature of the good life as much as any particular product. But by the 1950s, there was growing resistance to the cultural engineering implicit in modern branding, which many saw as antithetical to the philosophy of individualism. Thus, the modern branding paradigm, which was once advertising’s avant-garde, eventually hit a cultural dead end. Consumers in the 1960s no longer accepted that the values of brands could be dictated by marketing fiat; instead they saw brands and their consumption as integral to individuated identity projects. This, for Holt, is what distinguishes postmodern from modern consumer culture. Moreover, the theme of his narrative is that consumer culture and branding have co-evolved in a dialectical relationship. New forms of advertising ‘emerged in a pas de deux with the new postmodern consumer culture’ (Holt, 2002, p. 83). Creative marketers developed this postmodern branding paradigm, which was premised on the idea that brands are not cultural blueprints but are instead resources for consumers to use in identity work. These creative marketers are very much branding’s avant-garde. French Connection very much see themselves in the van of the avant-garde – ‘our campaigns have always been about being one step ahead of the rest’ (http://www.fcuk.com/ fcukadvertising, accessed 24 November 2005) – but Holt gives us a more representative group (individuals such as Bill Bernbach, George Lois and Jerry Delia Famina, and agencies such as Chiat Day and Wieden & Kennedy). These and others led the way in developing a palette of techniques that characterize postmodern branding. Holt distils the palette to four primary methods: the use of irony to distance a brand from the hype and conceit of conventional advertising; building a credible, ongoing relationship between a brand and a cultural epicentre, such as an arts or fashion community, a consumption community, urban culture, or an ethnic subculture; stealth branding (e.g. product placement); and engaging in brand authenticity work by con© 2006 The Authors Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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necting the brand with an authentic life-world so as to camouflage crass commercial intentions (here, the Harley Davidson Company is the pre-eminent example). The objective for these postmodern marketers is to ensure that consumers will use brands in identity work, which means they must be perceived to be authentic, that is ‘original and disinterested’ (Holt, 2002, p. 85).
Brand New And so we return to fcuk, perhaps the quintessential postmodern branding campaign. What postmodern consumer culture demands is ambiguity, irony, humour, authenticity, a bit of defiance and yet a strong dose of conservativism. Fcuk has it all. The case of branding, fcuk in particular, is . . . exemplary: courting and curtailing censure (it’s not an expletive but a brand name), coy and brazen, transgressive and banal, innocent and knowing, clever and vulgar, defiant and compliant, infantile and sophisticated, fashionable and against fashion, the perverse play calls up and disavows cultural limits at the same time. (Botting, 2004, p. 42) The fcuk campaign is especially postmodern, in Holt’s understanding of the term, in the way it enables and encourages consumers to reflexively use marketing resources in identity work through which they strive to deflect the perceived paternalism of corporations by constructing themselves, inter alia, as sovereign consumers. A nice example of this is the run of t-shirts with the Father Ted inspired logo (or anti-logo) ‘fcek: the Irish connection’. But Holt’s story does not stop here. The problem for the postmodern branding paradigm is that it is beset by a host of postmodern contradictions that very much mirror the difficulties faced by the avant-garde in art. A handful of artists/advertisers can mock artistic/advertising conventions, but the irony soon becomes tired through simple repetition. Likewise, reflexive, media-literate consumers have become aware of – if not hostile to – branding’s postmodern tricks. And there is limited scope for marketers to attach brands to authentic life-worlds, as these are limited in number and liable to be corroded precisely once perceived as colonized by branding.
End Game What we have seen is that parallel processes are at work in the avant-garde – that is the artic-
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ulation of the new – in art and advertising. Both face similar problematics. In reflecting on what our culture had lost that the avant-garde had in 1890, Hughes singled out ‘above all the sense that art, in the most disinterested and noble way, could find the necessary metaphors by which a radically changing culture could be explained to its inhabitants’ (1980, p. 10). Hughes, who attempts to maintain a distinction between art and advertising, laments the loss of disinterest in contemporary art which, tellingly, is precisely what Holt sees as a defining feature of postmodern (though not postpostmodern) marketing: ‘To be authentic, brands must be disinterested; they must be perceived as invented and disseminated by parties without an instrumental economic agenda, by people who are intrinsically motivated by their inherent value’ (Holt, 2002, p. 83, emphasis added). But, as Holt himself maps out, this is unachievable because of the strategic interest that ultimately drives advertising. For in one crucial aspect, advertising is different from art. As bluntly put by Hite, ‘Techniques of art, layout, typography, radio and television productions and fine writing are important. Nevertheless, they are secondary to the basic selling proposition around which the ad or commercial is built’ (1988, p. 206). Or, more succinctly (because one-liners work), ‘Creative without strategy is called “art.” Creative with strategy is called “advertising” ’ (Richards, 1995). And this ‘strategy’ is the antithesis of the disinterest that Hughes so valorizes. It is also why the postmodern turn in advertising leads, ultimately, back to the same. Having identified the limits of postmodern branding, Holt speculates what postpostmodern marketing/consumer culture dialectic might evolve, though his analysis at this point is vague and unconvincing. In place of postmodern marketing – which Holt sees as parasitic – Holt holds the romantic hope that post-postmodern brands ‘will become another form of expressive culture’. In other words, Art. But the history of the avant-garde would suggest otherwise. In essence, the argument brings us back to the end of (the shock of) the new no matter what direction we take. On the one hand, if advertising is nothing more than AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action – which was first discussed in 1898 by Saint Elmo Lewis) then the postmodern turn is only a slight variation on a theme and the same model continues. On the other, if we see the postmodern as akin to an avant-garde advertising, then we will get to the end of the new this way as well as this avant-garde will ultimately lead us to where the avant-garde in art got to – i.e. the end of the avant-garde, the end of the new. Or, more pre-
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cisely, the end of a teleological narrative founded on concepts like the ‘new’ and the ‘old’ and from which the latter derive their ongoing meaning. In this non-teleological world we have no future vision but live instead in the perpetual present. In this synchronic world, brands provide a potent basis for meaning since ‘[o]ur primary source of hope has shifted from religion, to art and science, and finally to consumption’ (Belk, 1996, p. 93). Advertising has taken on the mantle of progress: . . . in the absence of stronger illusions, the public needs to invest its dreams somewhere. Replacing other vendors of illusions that progress has dislodged from their traditional positions, advertising appears at the right time to fill the vacuum. (Brown, 1995, p. 51) Yet this ‘paradise’ is a ‘mournful, monotonous and superficial’ paradise (Baudrillard, 1989, p. 98): like the traffic on America’s freeways, on road systems the world over, we are ‘coming from nowhere, going nowhere’ (1989, p. 125). We draw upon and use all of our resources, only to end up destroying ‘metaphors, dreams, illusions and utopias by their absolute realization’ (Baudrillard, 1994) and indeed, destroying also the possibility of the new. The melancholic yearning for what has seemingly been lost, perhaps also present beneath Baudrillard’s droll critique as well as the outraged responses to it (e.g. Norris, 1992), is what gives a lingering vestige of shock to fcuk – both in the advertisers’ goals and in Botting’s critique. The deeper malaise comes from the re-attachment of new meaning to copies of what has gone before, with the suggestion that this is a return to what is authentic. This is precisely what Holt pines for in post-postmodern branding, while Don Kuspit, in The End of Art (2004), expresses a similar hope that the ‘New old masters’ will displace the anti-aestheticism of postmodern art. And perhaps that is what we have to look forward to: the ‘new old’. But as always, practice is way ahead of this critique. For his recent (April 2005) New York show, Damien Hirst, formerly the media darling of the so-called Young British Artists, received crushingly damning reviews (see, for example, Arendt, 2005; Salz, 2005; Stevens, 2005). But it is not so much the virulence of critical response here that is of interest, rather that which provoked it. For Hirst’s show, mimicking the output of Warhol’s Factory, was largely constituted by ‘photorealistic paintings . . . painted with the help of assistants under Hirst’s direction’ (Arendt, 2005), parading under romantic titles akin to those associated with the highest points of art’s history. A series © 2006 The Authors Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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of copies of copies, bereft of clear origin, drawing upon, displaying, and in at least one possible reading positively eviscerating any simple glorification of, the authenticity of, anything approaching ‘new old masters’. The old ‘new’, by which we mean the shock of the new that was modernity, is no longer new. And there can be no simple return. Our new, if it is anything, is old.
163 villagevoice.com/art/0514,saltz,62718,13.html, accessed 15 April 2005. Scheidlower, Jesse (1999) The f-word (2nd edn). Faber & Faber, London. Simmel, G. (2004) The Philosophy of Money, 3rd enlarged edition, D. Frisby (ed.), T. Bottomore & D. Frisby (trans., from a first draft by K. Mengelberg) Routledge, London. Stevens, M. (2005) Has Damien Hirst jumped the shark. New York Magazine, 4 April 2005. Available at http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/ arts/art/reviews/11602/, accessed 15 April 2005.
References Arendt, P. (2005) Hirst show ‘terrible’, say New York critics, The Guardian, 7 April. Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858, 5164883-110427,00.html, accessed 13 April 2005. Baudrillard, J. (1989) America, tr. C. Turner. Verso, New York. Baudrillard, J. (1994) Simulcra and Simulation, trans. S.F. Glaser. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. Belk, R.W. (1996) On Aura, Illusion, Escape and Hope in Apocalyptic Consumption. In Brown S., Bell, J. and Carson D. (eds.), Marketing Apocalypse: Eschatology, Escapology and Illusion of the End. Routledge, London pp. 87–107. Belting, H. (1987) The End of the History of Art? University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Botting, F. (2004) Fcuk Speed. Culture and Organisation, 10(1), pp. 37–52. Brown, S. (1995) Postmodern Marketing. Routledge, London. Danto, A. (1997) After the End of Art. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Dunlop, P. (1972) The shock of the new: seven historic exhibitions of modern art. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London. Hite, M. (1988) Adman: Morris Hite’s Methods for Winning the Ad Game, E-Heart Press, Dallas, TX. Holt, D.B. (2002) Why do brands cause trouble? a dialectical theory of consumer culture and branding. Journal of Consumer Research, 29, pp. 70–90. Hughes, R. (1980) The Shock of the New. BBC Publications, London. Kuspit, D. (2004) The End of Art. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Norris, C. (1992) Uncritical Theory: Postmodernism, Intellectuals, and the Gulf War. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst. Rehn, A. and Sköld, D. (2003) BLING-BLING: The Economic Discourses of Hip-Hop. The Pink Machine Papers 11(2). Richards, J.I. (1995) Available at http://advertising. utexas.edu/research/quotes/Q100.html#Strategy, accessed 5 September 2004. Salz, J. (2005) The Emperor’s new paintings. Village Voice, 5 April 2005. Available at http://www1.
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Geoff Lightfoot (
[email protected]) is Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Accounting at the Centre for Philosophy and Political Economy, University of Leicester Management Centre. His research explores the relationships between representation and markets. More particularly this includes deconstructing narratives of entrepreneurship and of trading (particularly within financial markets) with a particular focus upon how such narratives collide with other representational regimes, such as accounting. Geoff has published widely on these issues – more details can be found at: http://www.le.ac.uk/ulmc/ academics/glightfoot.html. Simon Lilley (
[email protected]) is Reader in Information and Organisation at the Centre for Philosophy and Political Economy, University of Leicester Management Centre. His research turns around the relationships between (human) agency, technology and performance and particularly the ways in which such relationships can be understood through post-structural approaches to organization. These concerns are reflected in a range of publications that focus upon the use of information technologies and strategic models in organizations and the regulation and conduct of financial and commodity derivatives trading. More details can be found at: http://www. le.ac.uk/ulmc/academics/slilley.html Donncha Kavanagh (
[email protected]) is Senior Lecturer in Management in University College Cork, the National University of Ireland, Cork. His research is focused on the development and translation of management and marketing discourse. He has published in the fields of consumer behaviour, organization theory, marketing, engineering and the sociology of technology. More details can be found at: http:// www.ucc.ie/academic/mgt/dk/
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The Psychology of Novelty-Seeking, Creativity and Innovation: Neurocognitive Aspects Within a Work-Psychological Perspective Tanja Sophie Schweizer Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last. Samuel Johnson, 1751 Why are some people constantly on the move towards something new, while others feel comfortable with what there is? What motivates us to seek for the new? What helps us in finding it? What leads us to transform what we find into a product that is visible to others and expose us to their judgement? Research in psychology holds fascinating insights concerning the above questions. Surprisingly, neurocognitive and neuropsychological insights that could lead to a better understanding of the processes of novelty-seeking and novelty-finding, have received little attention in the creativity and innovation literature. Especially for those working in professions where the generation of the new is the core business, it would be highly relevant to know more about those biological parameters of novelty generation and especially how they make human beings behave in professional environments. Such knowledge can not only improve human resource management in creative work settings, but also help creative professionals to better understand and manage themselves. The Novelty Generation Model (NGM) introduced in this article offers a new perspective. key feature of finding something new and being creative is the ability to think in ways that differ from established lines of thought, for instance by associating previously unrelated elements with each other. From a neuropsychological point of view, highly novelty-seeking individuals and above-average novelty-finders can be identified by particular sets of neurocognitive traits and styles of thinking that also require specific work conditions. In this article, neurocognitive and neuropsychological findings that have remained unused in the creativity and innovation literature are given a place next to the personality and social psychological insights that are already established. Based hereupon, noveltyseeking, creativity and innovative performance are proposed as key components of the novelty generation process in a new model: the Novelty Generation Model (NGM). Specific motivational states, neurocognitive and personality traits as well as social environments affect the three related components of
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novelty-seeking, creativity and innovative performance. Distinguishing between these components with their different inputs allows researchers and practitioners to identify more accurately the critical switches where dysfunctions may occur in the process of generating a novelty, dysfunctions that may not only be of psychological, but also economic consequence. Awareness of these potential dysfunctions can bring about far more fine-grained and adequate measures of support for each of these three processes in creative work settings. The article concludes with practical applications that illustrate the value of the NGM and its related knowledge in professional environments.
Neurocognitive Aspects of the Novelty Generation Process Within the genetic, neurocognitive and neuropsychological research fields there are a © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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number of potential starting points for opening up this body of knowledge for researchers and practitioners interested in a better understanding of the novelty generation process. First of all, it has been discovered that noveltyseeking behaviour is related to individual differences in specific neurotransmitter activity in the brain. It has been argued that the noveltyseeking personality is modulated by the transmission of the neurotransmitter dopamine (Cloninger, 1994). Specific genes determining this transmission (DRD4, DRD2-A2, SLC6A39) have been labelled ‘novelty-seeking genes’ (Benjamin et al., 1996; Ebstein et al., 1996; Lerman, et al., 1999; Prolo & Licinio, 2002). Highly novelty-seeking individuals are at a higher risk of falling prey to particular patterns of psychological dysfunctioning, most notably attention deficits and addictive behaviours (Cloninger et al., 1994) that may also influence their social interaction patterns in professional environments. The link between an individual’s novelty-seeking personality and his/her creativity crucially depends on the degree to which an individual is a noveltyseeker, mainly related to the individual’s dopamine levels, and requires the matching forms of support by those who seek to manage their creative process (Schweizer, 2004). Being a ‘creative genius’ has been argued to emerge from configurations of multiple genes all interacting with each other (Lykken, McGue & Tellegen, 1992). Creativity can be seen as a particular kind of response style (MacKinnon, 1962) and activities of problemseeking, problem-finding and problemsolving (Getzels & Csikszentmihaly, 1975; Kasperson, 1978). Research on creative cognition can best ‘identify traditional areas in cognitive psychology and cognitive science that could be explored in a more creative way, such as mental imagery, concept formation, categorization, memory retrieval, analogical reasoning, and problem-solving’ (Finke, Ward & Smith, 1992, p. 189). In order to find something new, focused attention is necessary, but also the defocusing of attention: creative thinking involves intuitive leaps, which are facilitated by states of unfocused relaxation, low levels of cortical and frontal-lobe activation and more right than left hemisphere activation (Martindale, 1999). Also, associative capabilities (Mednick, 1962), especially between remotely associated items, have long been identified as a key cognitive marker of creativity. Latent inhibition (LI) is another key to creative cognition: low latent inhibition, referring to a tendency to have – put simply – many things on your mind at the same time, is linked with higher creative achievement (Carson, Peterson & Higgins, 2003). Low LI © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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individuals continuously experience a higher number of stimuli simultaneously because they ignore less than those with average or high LI scores. This may also related to the concept of lateral thinking suggested as an aspect of creativity, that is, seeing things broadly and from various perspectives (DeBono, 1992). Neurocognitive characteristics of creative processes are highly under-researched but gradually gaining ground in brain research (Schweizer et al., 2006). Understanding such neurocognitive parameters in the creative process means learning more about why people behave the way they behave and how one can best deal with them when it comes to dysfunctional behaviours in the work environment. The application of such knowledge to human resource management is a new stream of creativity research at the borders of the organizational sciences, neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience. Crossing these interdisciplinary borders forms a major challenge.
Personality and Social Psychological Views on Creativity and Innovation How can the above type of knowledge be linked to personality psychology and social psychological insights that have a more established place in the creativity literature? Personality traits that are widely accepted as supporting creativity are, for instance, judgemental autonomy, self-confidence, risk-taking, non-conformity, independence and a critical attitude towards norms (Amabile, 1983a; Eysenck, 1993; Feist, 1998; Kasof, 1995; MacKinnon, 1965). But there is also some research in the personality literature related to novelty and curiosity that comes closer to the neurocognitive tendencies discussed above. For instance, Berlyne in the 1960s distinguished various types of novelty and different forms of exploratory behaviour, as well as diversive curiosity, which includes the seeking of novelty or complexity driven by a state of boredom, and epistemic curiosity, defined as driven by the need to resolve uncertainty concerning perceptual or symbolic representation (Berlyne, 1960). In the 1970s, Pearson developed his so-called novelty-experiencing scales (NES) around the construct tendency towards novelty as a behaviour of approaching novelty contrary to avoiding novelty (Pearson, 1970). In the 1990s a concept called novelty-seeking is included in the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), where novelty-seeking is defined as a temperament factor that is ‘viewed as a heritable bias in the activation or initiation of behavior such as frequent
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exploratory activity in response to novelty’ which belongs to ‘automatic, pre-conceptual responses to perceptual stimuli presumably reflecting heritable biases in information processing’ (Cloninger, Svrakic & Przybeck, 1993, p. 977). Similar, and related to Cloninger’s novelty-seeking scale, are Zuckerman’s sensation-seeking scale (Zuckerman & Cloninger, 1996) and the Openness to Experience dimension in Costa and McCrae’s Five Factor Model (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Within Zuckerman’s sensation seeking trait two dimensions are of particular interest: experience seeking (ES), referring to ‘the seeking of novel sensations and experiences through the mind and senses, as in arousing music, art, and travel, and through social nonconformity, as in association with groups on the fringes of conventional society (e.g. artists)’ and boredom susceptibility (BS), which ‘represents an intolerance for repetitive experience of any kind, including routine work, and boring people’ (Zuckerman, 1994, pp. 27–32). In the NEO-PIR (a measure of Costa and McCrae’s fivefactor model of personality) individuals scoring high on the ‘openness to experience’ factor have been assigned personality facets such as curious, creative, original and imaginative (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Items included in this openness dimension are ‘values intellectual matters’, ‘rebellious’, ‘non-conforming’ versus the non-openness end of the continuum including ‘sex-role stereotyped behaviour’, ‘favours conservative values’, ‘uncomfortable with complexities’, ‘judges in conventional terms’ (p. 657). Openness has been found to be related to trait creativity (McCrae, 1987), creative personality (Feist, 1999), creative achievement (King, Walker & Broyles, 1996) and cultural innovation (McCrae, 1996). Also similar to novelty seeking is the construct ‘need for cognition’ (NC) (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982). Individuals scoring high on the need for cognition ‘naturally tend to seek, acquire, think about, and reflect back on information to make sense of stimuli, relationships, and events in their world’ – whereas those scoring low on need for cognition are ‘more likely to rely on others (e.g. celebrities and experts), cognitive heuristics, or social comparison processes’ (Cacioppo et al., 1996, p. 198). From the pool of social psychological theories, social influence, social comparison and social judgement research provide good tools for an in-depth approach to the social aspects of the novelty generation process. First of all, novelty-seeking and creative activities can be influenced by the social environment in which they take place. Individuals can be socially influenced by cues perceived in the environment that either support (so-called promotion
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cues) or interfere (so-called prevention cues) with an individual’s likelihood to be creative (Friedman & Förster, 2000, 2001). Parents with higher educational status may act as promoters by providing ‘environmental contributions to their child’s intellectual ability and also may encourage exploratory, socially stimulating behaviors’ (Raine et al., 2002). Exposure to creative role-models supports creative individuals in their development (Bandura, 1977; Simonton, 1975). Social comparison is one way for an individual to find his or her way in the creative process. However, it is not only individuals who compare themselves to others, but also those who see the products of their creative process compare them to others. So second, social comparison and judgement processes are also key for being attributed the label ‘creative’. Marcel Duchamp presented a urinal to the world and it became a famous artwork, because the art world at some point recognized the novelty in its presentation. Individuals can display novelty-seeking and creative behaviour, but only the judgement by others may label the results from this behaviour as new, that is: ‘innovative’. It is a longestablished idea in the psychological literature that the judgement of knowledgeable others such as experts, peers or supervisors are key in assessing the value of an individual’s contribution (Getzels & Csikszentmihaly, 1975; MacKinnon, 1962). How such judgement processes are managed in real decision-making processes in the creative industries has been explored, for instance in the context of Hollywood pitch meetings: here decision-makers judged the creative potential of applicants by matching individuals with creative and uncreative prototypes. How the applicants matched with the decision-makers themselves also played an important role (Elsbach & Kramer, 2003). Clearly, an innovation is not ‘something new’, but more appropriately referred to as ‘something that is judged as new’, thus a label resulting from a social comparison and judgment process – a label that can disappear from the product again, for instance if it enters another environment in which social judges do not consider this product as new. What role do neurocognitive aspects have in this social judgment process? Whether such judgements are intrinsically motivated in the sense that judges do really perceive novel stimuli in a product or whether it is extrinsically motivated by the social desirability or obligation felt by judges to ‘declare a product an innovation or non-innovation’ are two very different situations. After all, this process also requires the ability to perceive novelty and distinguish it from non-novelty, an ability that requires © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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similar neurocognitive markers as discussed, but this time on the side of those who pass the judgement about a potentially novel product.
Introducing the Novelty Generation Model (NGM) on Novelty-Seeking, Creativity and Innovative Performance People can seek for novelties for a whole lifetime but may never come to find something that is new to the world. Equally, people can engage in productive activities, but only rarely create a really new product. The subtle difference between ‘producing’ and ‘producing something novel’ remains one of the trickiest moments in understanding the concept of creativity. Various types of creative contributions have been discussed, and surprisingly also ‘replication’ has been included as a type of creativity that refers to the effort of keeping something as it is (Sternberg & Ben-Zeev, 2001, pp. 290–291; Sternberg, Kaufman & Pretz, 2004). Of course, replication is also an act of producing something, but one may wonder whether it really deserves to be included as a type of creativity – after all, it is similar to imitation, the absolute opposite of producing something novel. In scientific contexts such a wide view of creativity leads to major theoretical and methodological problems. Maybe also for this reason, some prefer more narrow definitions in which they emphasize that creativity is marked by the generation of novelty (Mandler, 1995). In this sense, other types of creativity classified by Sternberg and colleagues well deserve the label ‘creativity’, because they meet that novelty condition: for instance ‘redefinition’ (looking at a field from a new point of view), ‘advance forward incrementation’ (the attempt to move a field beyond a point where others are ready to go), and ‘redirection’ (the attempt to move a field towards a new and different direction). On two things we can probably all agree considering the above literature review. One is that there are different components that make up the entire process of novelty generation and creativity is only one of them. The second is that it is often not made clear in the literature to which of the different components of the novelty generation process the point of discussion relates. For example: it was found that the shyer and lower in self-esteem a child was, the lower its ‘creativity’ (Kemple, David & Wang, 1996). However, the specific switches in which the shyness actually interfered in their research were not specified. The child may well have been creative but its shyness © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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may have interfered with what follows the creative process, namely the process of achieving innovative performance that would require the child’s ability to present its creative products to the social environment and obtain recognition for it. If we had a model that distinguished creativity from innovative performance as different components of the novelty generation process, those above effects of shyness could better be located and understood. Various components and phases of creativity have been distinguished in the literature before, for example, the phase of preparation when individuals direct their attention to a particular topic and gather information within themselves and their environment; followed by an incubation phase in which conscious work stops and attention is directed to other things, while unconsciously the creative process continues; then the illumination, the moment when new insight suddenly comes to mind; and lastly the verification phase, in which logical and rational thought comes in again to turn the new insight into something apparent to others (Wallas, 1926). Similarly, it was suggested that creativity can be best conceptualized as a syndrome involving a number of elements: (a) the processes underlying the individual’s capacity to generate new ideas or understandings, (b) the characteristics of the individual facilitating process operation, (c) the characteristics of the individual facilitating the translation of these ideas into action, (d) The attributes of the situation conditioning the individual’s willingness to engage in creative behavior, and (e) the attributes of the situation influencing evaluation of the individual’s productive efforts’ (Mumford & Gustafson, 1988, p. 28) The question is: does this last element about the evaluation by the social environment really belong under the header of the creative process as such? Is this not a factor belonging to the achievement of innovative performance rather than creativity? The term ‘creativity’ may have been overstretched in recent decades. It solves some theoretical and methodological problems to model the novelty generation process as a whole and make clear conceptual distinctions between the seeking for novelties, followed by the finding of a novelty and transforming it into a product visible to others, and finally innovative performance, which stands for the social recognition that the producer of a novelty can receive in this world. Such a model would for instance account for scenarios in which a highly novelty-seeking individ-
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ual may create comparatively few novel products, or s/he may create novel products but still end up with a low innovative performance record. Where in the entire process of generating a novelty can the individual become stuck? The Novelty Generation Model (NGM) (Figure 1) can help to gain more insights on such key functions and dysfunctions in the process of generating something new (Schweizer, 2004). In this conceptual model I present the process of novelty-seeking as the first component in the onset of the whole novelty generation process, followed by creativity as a second component consisting of two main processes: novelty-finding and production of the novelty, which in turn is followed by innovative performance, in which a product is presented to a wider social environment. Within the NGM’s notion of creativity, noveltyfinding occurs when an individual has the neurocognitive traits that allow him or her for instance to come up with unusual combinations, an ability detected by creativity tests such as the RAT (Remote Associates Test) or ‘Unusual uses of objects’ tests like the ‘brick test’. Following this process component, an individual may decide to transform novel insights/findings into observable products
Individual Neurocognitive & Personality Traits
Curiosity Excitability Impulsiveness Easily bored Disinhibition Proactivity
Self-confidence Perseverance Skill/Experience (neurocognitively encoded) Egocentrism
Flexible vs. Rigid Low LI Remote Associating Defocussed Problem-solving
Individual Behavior
and we may say that someone has been ‘creative’, which in turn is the necessary condition for the following process component: a novelty entering the process for innovative performance. This final component in the process of generating a novelty – innovative performance – depends on the individual’s interaction with the social environment in which the novelty is presented. Here, co-operativeness, a factor in the TCI assumes a central role, just as extraversion and sociability in the Five-FactorModel help in presenting one’s products to a social environment. The willingness and the ability to interact with the environment to get a product socially judged and recognized as novel supports the achievement of innovative performance. History teaches the main difference between creativity and innovative performance: those with the great ideas have not necessarily received the social recognition for it; often the recognition has been harvested by others who were able to convince the environment about those ideas. And still others may not have sought for something novel, but have found something novel by chance and done something with it. Or innovative performance may have been assigned to products that are not novel at all. These examples are to emphasize: the process of novelty generation is not
Self-confidence Perseverance Assertiveness Proactivity Extraversion Cooperativeness
Creativity NoveltySeeking
NoveltyFinding
NoveltyProducing
Innovative Performance
Individual Motivation
Need for Cognition
Behavior of Others Note. - - - - = extrinsic motivation
Mastery Needs
Achievement Needs
Social Influence: Comparison & Judgment _____ = intrinsic motivation
Figure 1. The Novelty Generation Model (NGM)
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necessarily as linear as the NGM’s ideal-typical framing of the novelty generation process depicts. The NGM differs from the most widely accepted models suggested by Wallas (1926), Amabile (1983b) and Mumford and Gustafson (1988) in that it clearly treats creativity as only one component within the wider process of novelty generation, and it also pays attention to the neurocognitive/neuropsychological traits supporting it. In such an approach, relevant neurocognitive as well as personality traits can be clearly related to the different components. At the same time it becomes possible with the NGM to elaborate on the motivational inputs to each of the different sub-processes by indicating the different needs of the individual and also where they may work as either intrinsic or extrinsic motivators. For example, the NGM helps to visualize the problem that occurs when individuals seek and/or find novelties with motivations other than those of satisfying their needs for cognition: extrinsic motivators are at work then. This is for instance the case when achievement needs – which do function well as intrinsic motivators in achieving innovative performance – assume motivating roles in other components of the novelty generation process. And finally, the critical switches in the transition from novelty-seeking to noveltyfinding and novelty-producing, and then to innovative performance become investigable on the basis of the NGM. For instance, the NGM allows for identifying individuals with extremely high novelty-seeking scores that can make them jump from idea to idea without finishing the phases of transforming the ideas into presentable products and dealing with the social judgement process. Extremely high novelty-seekers are neuropsychologically at risk of being highly distractible and having short attention spans. It has been argued that it is not the highly above-average noveltyseeking personality, but rather a personality marked by slightly above average noveltyseeking scores that provides the optimal basis for the novelty generation process (Schweizer, 2004). Clearly, more in-depth research is required to better understand the noveltyseeking and novelty-finding processes, their neurocognitive and neuropsychological correlates (also encoded in experience and skills) as well as their behavioural implications in the creative work process.
Practical Implications of the NGM for Creative Work Environments The processes of novelty generation can occur in any occupational field, but in some profes© 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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sions they are essential: art, science, advertising or haute couture are good examples of fields where the generation of the new is the core business. In such settings the interaction between creative staff on the one hand and operational staff on the other often becomes a key management issue. This can also include interactions between departments or business units. R&D departments are an example of units to which the generation of novelties is central. But in departments and professions where novelty generation is not the essential task creativity also increasingly plays a role. Historically, the overall share of novelty generation processes across all professions was much smaller than it is in today’s fast and competitive environments, where the generation of new contents, styles and designs has become an essential ingredient of the survival of firms. The NGM is meant to represent the basis for a toolbox that can be used by two particular groups of professionals involved in the novelty generation process: first of all, those who directly operate in creative work environments; second, the group of individuals who take more facilitative roles, for instance as support staff for creative staff, or who are involved in personnel selection or human resource management in the widest sense. The first group directly involved in the novelty generation process may find the NGM and its related body of knowledge helpful for analysing their own novelty generation processes, for instance along the following sets of questions: Where are my strengths and weaknesses within the whole process of generating a novelty: in the seeking of novelties? In finding them? In transforming my findings into products? How am I doing when it comes to finding public recognition for my products? Can I get really excited about things? Do I get easily bored? Do I take pleasure in thinking about things in unusual ways? Can I step back from a problem and let its solution come up in me in a relaxed mode? Do I have a tendency to jump to new projects without finishing them? Do I feel confident about my own creativity? Do I like to present my ideas and my work in public or do I have a tendency to keep my ideas to myself? What motivates me to generate novelties? Am I genuinely enthusiastic about my work? How important is it for me to produce something and see for myself that I can do it? To what degree am I concerned
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with what others will think about it? How important is it for me to get the public recognition of others for it? Where are the links in my novelty generation processes that could be improved? What kinds of training could help me to better handle myself in the critical switches of the process? Do I receive the social support I need for seeking and finding novelties, producing them and presenting them to others? Can I accept support from others at all? What are the main sources of support I draw on? Do I experience a sense of wellbeing in my work environment? On the other hand, people who are indirectly involved in the novelty generation process, for instance those who manage creative staff, may also benefit from the NGM and its related knowledge. Most importantly, they can support those who are directly involved in the novelty generation process by creating awareness of dysfunctional switches in their work process and develop adequate support strategies with and for them. In order to further illustrate the managerial value of the NGM, some practical examples will be offered in the following. Some of these examples also indicate the direct benefit of neurocognitive and neuropsychological knowledge within creative work scenarios. • Creative staff selection. Human resource managers still have a rather limited set of criteria for the decision-making process concerning the selection of new staff for creative positions. In particular, how to determine the specific role that new employees are the fittest to take within the entire novelty generation process is an important issue. Screening for the neurocognitive and personality markers that support work in the different components of the NGM can facilitate the decision-making process. • Training creative staff. For existing staff an identification of the individuals’ personality and neurocognitive strengths as well as deficits affecting the novelty generation process would be a worthwhile HRM policy. • Managing addictive behaviours in workplaces. This issue is currently rising in importance, for instance in the context of internationally diffusing non-smoking policies in office spaces. From a neuropharmacological perspective the physical need for nicotine during the novelty generation process can be explained by its facilitative effect in deliberate and focused creative problem-solving (similar to caffeine). On the other side of the spectrum there is the consumption of alco-
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hol to achieve a down-regulation of the prefrontal cortex and the relaxation that supports more spontaneous creative problem-solving. Alcohol abuse is also known to be widely spread in the creative professions. According to recent research in the neurosciences and neuropsychology, neural pathways can be trained in order to achieve effects that are able to substitute for the effects of the above-mentioned drugs. Stimulating the training and use of these alternatives during work hours could help employees maintain good productivity within a drug-wise restricted environment. • Detecting compensatory behaviours. Weaknesses in one of the components of the novelty generation process are often compensated by excessive activity in the other components. Recognizing such compensatory behaviours can help re-directing the employee’s energies into his/her deficient components. • Composition of work teams. The value of composing teams in a way that optimally covers the different components of the novelty generation process can become particularly obvious in critical moments of the novelty generation process. A good example here is the case of a research team confronted with completely unexpected research results shortly before a deadline. Whereas neurocognitively more rigid team members can provide good structure to the overall process, they often respond less constructively in drastically changed situations and under extreme time-pressure. In contrast, team members with more flexible cognitive styles of thinking may be more able to shift between different cognitive sets, which makes them more likely to respond in a constructive way to the changed situation, seeking out new opportunities and thereby realizing creative potential in such disruptive situations. Joined in a team, different sets of capabilities further the novelty generation process at different points in time. • Handling employees’ stress, fatigue and absence records. Job dissatisfaction, stress or aboveaverage absence records among creative staff can be symptoms of deeper-lying dissociations within the novelty generation process. Examples are: extremely noveltyseeking individuals who may experience strong limitations in their working environment wasting their novelty-seeking and creative energy; vice versa, individuals with a neurocognitive set-up that is less supportive for novelty-seeking and noveltyfinding activities often draw mainly on extrinsic motivations such as social achievement. In professions in which creative out© 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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puts are part of the job definition this can cause excessive work pressure to the individual. The identification and dissolution of such distortions in the working process form an important part of managing the well-being and productivity of employees. These were only a few practical examples indicating starting points for a managerial application of the NGM and the body of knowledge it represents. The examples also illustrate that the psychosocial chain of novelty-seeking, creativity and innovative performance is flexible to some degree, but also fragile. The social inability to manage the needs of potential novelty generators comes with high costs for all those involved. What is more, in a wider perspective, inestimable societal costs occur where investments disappear in innovation processes that are not sufficiently fed by novelty-seeking, finding and producing, but by a self-sustaining network of social judges acknowledging the production of a novelty even where there is none. A society as a whole is served best if occupational and organizational decisions in novelty-generating professions are informed by an in-depth knowledge of the psychological factors underlying the generation of the new. The above examples are also meant to draw attention to the need for theory-building and empirical testing concerning the critical switches of the novelty generation process discussed in this article. Lastly, it became obvious that the elaboration of the practical implications of neurocognitive and neuropsychological insights for both, managerial use on the one hand and selfknowledge of the creative staff themselves on the other, is still in its infancy and would certainly deserve more attention in creativity and innovation research. Hopefully this article has opened up this debate and provides impulses for future research into these particular workpsychological issues. Notably, these issues also hold the keys to understanding the unique pleasure that can be experienced during such creative research work.
References Amabile, T.M. (1983a) The social psychology of creativity. Springer-Verlag, New York. Amabile, T.M. (1983b) The social psychology of creativity: A componential conceptualization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 357–76. Bandura, A. (1977) Social learning theory. Prentice, Englewood Cliffs. Benjamin, J., Li, L., Patterson, C., Greenberg, B.D., Murphy, D.L. and Hamer, D.H. (1996) Population and familial association between the D4 dopamine receptor gene and measures © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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of Novelty Seeking. Nature Genetics, 12(3), 81– 4. Berlyne, D.E. (1960) Conflict, arousal, and curiosity. McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York. Cacioppo, J.T. and Petty, R.E. (1982) The need for cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 116–31. Cacioppo, J.T., Petty, R.E., Feinstein, J.A., Blair, W. and Jarvis, G. (1996) Dispositional differences in cognitive motivation: The life and times of individuals varying in need for cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 197–253. Carson, S.H., Peterson, J.B. and Higgins, D.M. (2003) Decreased Latent Inhibition is associated with increased creative achievement in highfunctioning individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(3), 499–506. Cloninger, C.R. (1994) Temperament and personality. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 4, 266– 73. Cloninger, C.R., Przybeck, T.R., Svrakic, D.M. and Wetzel, R.D. (1994) Temperament and Character Inventory: A Guide to Its Development and Use.: Center for Psychobiology of Personality, Department of Psychiatry, Washington University St., Missouri. Cloninger, C.R., Svrakic, D.M. and Przybeck, T.R. (1993) A psychobiological model of temperament and character. Archives of General Psychiatry, 1993(50), 975–90. Costa, P.T. and McCrae, R.R. (1992) Four ways five factors are basic. Personality and Individual Differences, 13(6), 653–65. DeBono, K.G. (1992) Serious creativity: Using the power of lateral thinking to create new ideas. HarperCollins, New York. Ebstein, R.P., Novick, O., Umansky, R., et al. (1996) Dopamine D4 receptor (D4DR) exon III polymorphism associated with the personality trait of Novelty Seeking. Nature Genetics, 12(3), 78–80. Elsbach, K.D. and Kramer, R.M. (2003) Assessing creativity in Hollywood pitch meetings: Evidence for a dual-process model of creativity judgments. Academy of Management Journal, 46(3), 283–301. Eysenck, H.J. (1993) Creativity and personality: A theoretical perspective. Psychological Inquiry, 4, 147–78. Feist, G.J. (1998) A meta-analysis of personality in scientific and artistic creativity. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2, 290–309. Feist, G.J. (1999) The influence of personality on artistic and scientific creativity. In R.J. Sternberg (ed.), Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Finke, R.A., Ward, T.B. and Smith, S.M. (1992) Creative Cognition. Theory, Research, and Applications. MIT Press, Cambridge MA. Getzels, J.W. and Csikszentmihaly, M. (1975) From problem solving to problem finding. In Taylor, I.A. and Getzels, J.W. (eds), Perspectives in Creativity. Aldine, Chicago pp. 90–116. Kasof, J. (1995) Social determinants of creativity: Status expectations and the evaluation of original products. Advances in Group Processes, 12, 167– 220. Kasperson, C.J. (1978) Psychology of the scientists: XXXVII. Scientific creativity: A relationship with
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information channels. Psychological Reports, 42, 691–4. Kemple, K.M., David, G.M. and Wang, Y. (1996) Preschoolers’ creativity, shyness, and self-esteem. Creativity Research Journal, 9, 317–26. King, L., Walker, L. and Broyles, S. (1996) Creativity and the five-factor model. Journal of Research in Personality, 30, 189–203. Lerman, C., Audrain, J., MaIn, D., et al. (1999) Evidence SuggestIng the role of specific genetic factors In cigarette smoking. Health Psychology, 18(1). Lykken, D.T., McGue, M. and Tellegen, A. (1992) Genetic traits that may not run in families. American Psychologist, 47(12), 1565–77. MacKinnon, D.W. (1962) The nature and nurture of creative talent. American Psychologist, 17, 484– 95. MacKinnon, D.W. (1965) Personality and the realization of creative potential. American Psychologist, 20, 273–81. Mandler, G. (1995) Origins and consequences of novelty. In Smith, S.M., Ward, T.B. and Finke, R.A. (eds), The creative cognition approach. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Martindale, C. (1999) Biological Bases of Creativity. In Sternberg, R.J. (ed.), Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge pp. 137– 52. McCrae, R.R. (1987) Creativity, divergent thinking, and openness to experience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 1258–63. McCrae, R.R. (1996) Social consequences of experiential openness. Psychological Bulletin, 120(3), 323–37. Mednick, S.A. (1962) The associative basis of the creative process. Psychological Review, 69, 220– 32. Mumford, M.D. and Gustafson, S.B. (1988) Creativity syndrome: Integration, application, and innovation. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 27–43. Pearson, P.H. (1970) Relationships between global and specified measures of novelty-seeking. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 34, 199– 204. Prolo, P. and Licinio, J. (2002) DRD4 and novelty seeking. In Benjamin, J., Ebstein, R.P. Belmaker, R.H. (eds), Molecular genetics and the human personality. American Psychiatry Publishing, Washington, DC. Raine, A., Reynolds, C., Venables, P.H. and Mednick, S.A. (2002) Stimulation seeking and intelli-
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gence: A prospective longitudinal study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(4), 663–74. Schweizer, T.S. (2004) An Individual Psychology of Novelty-Seeking, Creativity and Innovation. ERIM Ph.D. Series, Nr. 48. Schweizer, T.S., Deijen, J.B., Heslenfeld, D., Nieuwenhuis, S. and Talsma, D. (2006) Functional magnetic resonance imaging of brain activity during rigid versus creative thought processes in obsessive-compulsive patients. Paper presented at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society Conference, San Francisco, CA, USA. Simonton, D.K. (1975) Sociocultural context of individual creativity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32, 1119–33. Sternberg, R.J. and Ben-Zeev, T. (2001) Complex Cognition. Oxford University Press, New York. Sternberg, R.J., Kaufman, J.C. and Pretz, J.E. (2004) A propulsion model of creative leadership. Creativity and Innovation Management, 13(3), 145–53. Wallas, G. (1926) The art of thought. Jonathan Cape, London. Zuckerman, M. (1994) Behavioral expressions and biosocial expressions of sensation seeking. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Zuckerman, M. and Cloninger, C.R. (1996) Relationships between Cloninger’s, Zuckerman’s, and Eysenck’s dimensions of personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 21, 283–5.
Tanja Sophie Schweizer (ts.schweizer@ psy.vu.nl) works as an assistant professor in the Clinical Neuropsychology Department of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in The Netherlands. Her research interests cover the neurocognitive aspects of creative activity also relating to her earlier research at the Rotterdam School of Management on the human resource management aspects of creativity. Her specialization is brain research using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) during creative tasks. The findings of her brain research are combined with work-psychological applications.
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The Sources of Novelty: A Cultural and Systemic View of Distributed Creativity Reijo Miettinen This article discusses the limitations of the first generation of creativity-management technologies based on the psychological theories of intelligence and problem solving. The turn into a cultural and systemic conceptions in the psychology of creativity is analysed. It is argued that this psychology converges with the ideas developed in the sociology of knowledge, the history of technological systems, and activity theory as well as in innovation studies. All of them underline the significance of artefact-mediated communities, domains or practices. They agree on the importance of combining heterogeneous cultural resources and knowledge by horizontal networking across the boundaries of knowledge and activity domains. The internet-mediated new communities are discussed as emerging forms of distributed creation. A challenge for the management of creativity is to study and learn from the emerging problems, means and patterns of conduct of these communities.
Introduction
I
nnovation became a central part of science and technology policy making and rhetoric in the 1980s and 1990s. The emergence of creativity as an issue of management evidently has the same origins. New knowledge and new technologies have become a key factor in the global economic competition of the socalled knowledge society. A prologue to this turn can be found in the history of the psychological studies of creativity. In 1950 J. P. Guilford, when accepting the presidency of the American Psychological Association, gave an inauguration speech on the need for the study and development of creativity (Guilford, 1950). He stated that the significance of creativity for industry and society has enormously increased. Both industry and public administration need leaders with vision and talent. Guilford set two tasks for creativity studies. One was that it is necessary to recognize the creative talents of individuals and the second was to develop them. The first task was to be achieved by developing tests that measured the creative traits of individuals, and the latter by developing technologies of creative thinking and decision making. By the end of the 1950s several creativity tests and problem© 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
solving technologies had been developed with support from the US Defense Department, and creativity courses became an important branch of the business of commercial training (Getselz, 1987). Brainstorming and synectics designed by the ‘creativity movement’ of the decade are standard parts of university curriculums even today. This first generation of creativity technology was based on the differential psychology developed in the 1930s and 1940s to measure intelligence and IQ. Its individualistic and positivistic conception of creativity and personality was subsequently heavily criticized by psychologists (Oeche, 1990; Weisberg, 1993), sociologists (Branningan, 1981) and philosophers (Feyerabend, 1987). Today, the potential theoretical sources for the understanding and management of creativity come from different disciplines and research traditions, such as psychology, sociology of science and technology, economic and sociological studies of innovations and history of technology. Furthermore, important converging developments can be discovered in these traditions. These developments suggest that a common ground for understanding creativity might be gradually achieved. The first evident feature of these developments is the
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transition from an individualistic into a systemic, contextual or sociocultural view of creativity. Different concepts and ways of making sense of various cultural and social determinants of creativity and innovation have been suggested (Csikszentmihalyi, 1977 and 1999). The second feature is the turn from cognitive processes to the analysis of human practices and material culture. This latter turn has recently been called a practice turn in social theory (Schatzki, Knorr-Cetina & von Savigny, 2001). Creativity and innovativeness are such complex phenomena that a simple model of them cannot be formulated. Instead, I will suggest that the accumulation of insights by these aforementioned disciplines can together constitute a non-unitary and non-trivial basis for understanding conditions of creativity (Miettinen, 1996, 2000). In addition, to aid in the understanding of these phenomena, rich, domain-specific and historical accounts of cases of creative enterprises and achievements are needed (Wartofsky, 1980). It may turn out that a deep understanding of certain technologies and practices together with active networking would supply a more important basis for the management of creativity than any single theory of creativity or set of social technologies.
From Individual Psychology to a Cultural and Systemic View of Creativity Traditional psychology of creativity regarded creativity as a gift or property of an individual. Humanistic psychology (Maslow, 1959), psychoanalysis (Kris, 1952) and differential psychology (Guilford, 1950) were used to make sense of this gift. These disciplines were also embodied in creativity training as well as in guides and popular books about creativity. An important step toward a systemic or contextual approach in creativity studies was Howard Gruber’s (1981, 1989) path-breaking studies on the dynamics of the creative work of Charles Darwin. Gruber conceptualized creativity as a long-standing, heterogeneous work instead of analysing it as a quality of personality or as a special cognitive process (Gruber, 1981). His approach uncovered the complex dynamics of creative work that are organized into a network of enterprises and that use diverse cultural resources through collaboration with others. A more recent systemic framework was proponed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, David Feldman and Howard Gardner (Feldman, Csikszentmihalyi & Gardner, 1994). They call
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it the DIFI (Domain Individual Field Interaction) framework. The DIFI framework underlines the domain specificity of creativity and regards it as a result of interaction between a person, a cultural domain and a social field (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997) ‘Edison’s and Einstein’s discoveries would be inconceivable without the prior knowledge, without the intellectual and social network that stimulated their thinking, and without the social mechanisms that recognized and spread their innovations’ (1997, p. 7). The recognition of the need for interdisciplinarity has been an aspect of the systemic turn in creativity studies (e.g. Gardner, 1994; Holmes, 1989).1 Sociological theory of cultural maturation (Merton, 1961) and theory of attribution (Brannigan, 1981) are compatible with and complementary to the systems framework of psychology. Merton (1961) developed the theory of cultural maturation to explain the phenomenon of multiple, relatively simultaneous discoveries. He thought that the study of ‘multiples’ would reorient the study of scientific work from an individualistic and localist account to the social and cultural environment in which the scientists live, one which is larger than their local milieu and local interpersonal relations. According to Merton (1973), joint problems, joint scientific theories and joint instruments are the essential ingredients of cultural maturation and, at the same time, preconditions of an invention. Merton, therefore, regarded invention as basically a cultural phenomenon, one based on the use and transformation of cultural resources. The representatives of the constructivist sociology of science criticized the theory of cultural maturation for its universalistic and deterministic bias. According to them, two issues should be considered. The very quality of originality or inventiveness is attributed to a product by communities of specialists or users – in many cases after the construction actually has been established (Brannigan, 1981; Schaffer, 1996). Discovery is a retrospective label attributed to a candidate event by research communities – a technique for marking technical practices that are prized by the community (Schaffer, 1986, p. 387). According to this view, the attribution or the social construction of the status of invention to any product is the central phenomenon in studying creativity. The sociological theories characterized above elaborated two complementary aspects of the creative interaction between individuals and cultural contexts that are both recognized by the DIFI framework. First, the foundation and the starting point for creativity are the existing cultural resources (knowledge, instru© 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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ments, practices, problems) of a domain. Second, the field recognizes, selects and retains the new variants or the contributions of a domain.
Contradictions and Functional Failures of Practices as a Driving Force of Creation System-oriented historians and economists of technology as well as sociologists have studied the sources of change in socio-technical practices. Hughes (1978) and Constant (1984) regard the critical problems of socio-technical systems as central in explaining technological change. They call them ‘functional failures’ (Constant, 1984, p. 31) or ‘reverse salients’ (Hughes, 1987, p. 80) in the use and development of technology. Critical problems can be defined as problems retarding technological or industrial change and as problems likely, in the opinion of the inventor, to be solved by invention (Hughes, 1978, p. 172). Hughes understands that critical problems constitute a bridge between the imbalances of current technology use and inventive activity. The formulation of a critical problem already implies the possibility and direction of the solution. Drawing evidence from empirical studies of technical inventions, Hughes (1978) delineates a model of invention. It is based on finding a reverse salient of a socio-technical system and on the definition of a critical problem. The idea that a crisis or failure of a practice is a source of both change and the emergence of novelty is suggested by various philosophical and psychological research traditions, among them Dewey’s pragmatism and cultural historical activity theory. For Dewey, the formation of habits is a central mechanism of learning and the transmission of know-how and cultural tradition (Dewey, 1938/1991). In a changing world, habits often do not work or confront serious difficulties. In such a situation, according to Dewey, conscious reflection on the conditions of activity is needed, which leads to the formation of a working hypotheses for the reconstruction of the situation. Cultural historical activity theory is based on the concept of cultural mediation: the relationship between subject and her environment is mediated by signs and tools (Vygotsky, 1979). Correspondingly, the central mechanism of learning is remediation, the finding and creation of new means. The unit of analysis in studying human mediated activity is an activity system, a community of actors who have a common object of activity with a division of labour and by rules (Engeström, Miettinen & © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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Punamäki, 1999; Leontjev 1978). Activity theory regards the historically developed contradictions of an activity system as a source of change. Engeström charaterized several kinds of developmental contradictions (Engeström, 1987, pp. 82–91). In the development of artefacts, the contradiction between use value and exchange value is expressed, for instance, as an unceasing struggle for resolution between the demands of functionality and price. Contradictions also arise between the elements of the activity system, for instance, between the established tools or division of labor and the changing object or the projected new outcome of the activity. These developing contradictions first express themselves as errors, disturbances and as indeterminate discontent, which can be called a need state. Transforming them into a recognized problem requires conscious reflection by the participants and a call for remediation and innovative solutions. A clarifying example can be presented from a study on the labour protection inspection work in Finland (Virkkunen & Kuutti, 2000). The enforcement of labour-protection legislation in Finland is the responsibility of eleven district authorities, the Occupational Safety and Health Inspectorates. In these authorities, each inspector used to be responsible for a fixed number of work places and was supposed to inspect them regularly by using a unified checklist developed by the National Board of Labour Protection. The list was designed to standardize the inspection procedure. When the number and intricacy of the technological problems found in work places substantially increased in the 1970s as a result of a new legislation, this division of labour and the means of inspecting became highly unsatisfactory. It was also widely acknowledged that the causes of the health and safety problems remained uncovered. This is an example of a contradiction between the division of labour and longestablished tools, and the changed object of the work. The health inspectorate of Uusimaa developed an alternative model of organizing the inspection work with corresponding new means. Teams of inspectors were established to analyse the risks and safety problems of one industrial area (such as the construction industry) within their jurisprudence. A new set of tools called the System for Depicting the Field of Activity (SDFA) was developed and tested. It included a database that served as a common memory for the inspection teams. Instead of only inspecting separate workplaces, industry-wide measures, such as new regulations for scaffolding rental companies, were taken as a result of the analyses (Miet-
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tinen & Virkkunen, 2005). A simultaneous reorganization and re-tooling took place as a solution to the dysfunctionality that developed within the inspection system. This conception of the sources of change and novelty resembles the ideas of the theory of development of technological systems by the historians of technology as well as the pragmatist conception of a reconstruction of habits. All of them find re-tooling (or invention, innovation) as a reaction to the contradiction or imbalance in a system of practice. On the other hand, the concept of artefact-mediation also implies that the development of new tools and instrumentalities (such as information technology), makes the creation of new kind of objects and products possible and calls for, or even demands the re-organization of work.
Distributed Creation and the Networks of Innovation The ideas of the combining and hybridization of diverse cultural resources or the adoption of knowledge or instruments from foreign practices encountered in novel contexts have been elaborated by psychology of creativity (Koestler’s biassociation theory 1978), sociology of science (Ben-David, 1960) and innovation studies. Innovation studies have adopted Schumpeter’s idea of a novel combination of elements as a source of radical innovation. During the last few decades, sociology of science (Latour, 1987), sociology of economic institutions (Powell, 1990) as well as innovation studies (Freeman, 1991; Rothwell, 1992) have discovered network interaction as a social mechanism of such a hybridization. The focus on the significance of users (Von Hippel, 1988, 2005) as well as a producer-user relationship as a source of innovativeness (Lundvall, 1988) constitutes a special case of networking. Recently, open-source software development has been regarded as a paradigmatic example both of distributed creation or innovation (Boyle, 2003; Von Hippel, 2005) and of a network form of organization (Weber, 2004). Actor network theorists (Callon, 1986; Latour, 1987) started to study innovation as a simultaneous and interactive evolution of an artefact and the network of actors connected to it. They focused on the innovators’ capability of mobilizing other actors and translating their interests into making their participation necessary. As a result of this focus, the cultural content of the actors’ contributions and interactions tended to remain marginal (Miettinen, 1999). Cultural-historical activity theory in turn has focused on the cultural content and
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learning in the study of networks (Engeström & Escalante, 1995; Miettinen 1999). This theory regards innovation as a process of the shared construction of an object, a mobilization of the necessary and complementary cultural resources as well as a process of mutual learning. Focusing on different aspects of network formation, the points of view of the two theory are complementary. Both of them also focus, as does symbolic interactionism in science and technology studies, on the material objects that mediate the relationships between actors. Boundary objects (Star & Greisemer, 1989), standards (Fujimura, 1992), platforms (Keating & Cambrosio, 2003), databases, computerbased design kits (von Hippel, 2005) and other kind of artefacts and tools make the crossing of boundaries between different cultural domains possible. In sociology of economic institutions, networks were introduced in the 1990s as an alternative form of economic activity to hierarchy and market (Adler, 2001; Powell, 1990). In their early phases, innovations are composed of open, hypothetical and emerging knowledge that is hard to define in terms of price or well-established routines. In the market, price is a simplifying mechanism, which makes it difficult for the market to exchange novel technological know-how or enhance learning. Nor is hierarchical organization optimal for the purpose. Open, more informal interaction is needed: Networks, then, are especially useful for the exchange of commodities whose value is not easily measured. Such qualitative matters as know-how, technological capability, a particular approach or style of production, or a philosophy of zero defects are very hard to place a price tag on . . . The open-ended, relational features of networks . . . greatly enhance the ability to transmit and learn new knowledge and skills. (Powell, 1990, p. 304) According to this logic, Powell and his colleagues have proposed that the locus of innovation lies ever more in inter-organizational relationships, which they call networks of learning (Powell, Koput & Smith, 1996, p. 119). These relationships are not based on written contracts but rather on the norm of reciprocity, based on the complementarity of the knowledge, resources and interests of the actors. Noteboom’s theory of innovation finds a source of novelty in the transition of ideas and artifacts through several contexts: Before we can replace any practice, of theory, technology or organization, we first need to pursue its potential, in a range of © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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applications in a variety of contexts. We need to do this in order to build up a motive for change, to discover the limits of validity, and to other indications as to how to change it and what elements to preserve it, and how in a novel practice. (2001, p. 177) Because the boundary or a gap (the division of labour within organizations) between designer-producer and user prevails (Suchman, 2001), boundary crossing through horizontal networking between people from different contexts or practices is needed. The most distinctive example of a new network-based model of distributed creation is the open development model in software production (Boyle, 2003; Weber, 2004). It is seen as a paradigmatic case of a network organization or mode of distributed innovation called for by the knowledge-based economy (Castells, 2000) or the information technology revolution (Freeman & Louçã, 2002). In the model the source code of the software is kept freely available. According to licences based on the copyleft principle, users can use, modify and further distribute code and are invited to develop the code further. Linux kernel development is the bestknown example of this model. The core of the community comprises Linus Torvalds and 121 maintainers who are responsible for the modules of Linux. In addition, several thousand user-developers participated in the reporting of bugs and in the writing of new pieces of code (Lee & Cole, 2003).2 This kind of distributed creation is not controlled by an innovator: developers in the periphery select the problems and improvements they want to work with. The open development model is said to offer advantages over closed, in-house development as a model of the organization of development work (Moon & Sproul, 2002). This has been explained by referring to the quantity and heterogeneity of the programmers and users involved in development. The maxim ‘Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow’, dubbed ‘Linus’s Law’ by Raymond (1999, p. 41), refers to a quantitative explanation. Raymond also presents a complementary qualitative explanation, the utilization of localized variety or the Delphi effect: ‘Because adding more users adds more different ways of stressing the program. . . . Each one approaches the task of bug characterizing with a lightly different perceptual set and analytical toolkit, a different angle to the problem’ (1999, p. 43). The variety of skills, the uses for the software and the working environments of the volunteers add extra value to the quality of code (Von Hippel, 2005). © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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The open source model has been regarded both as a new community-based model of knowledge creation and as a recent example of distributed creation that has long been characteristic of open science, law and education (Boyle, 2003). In his recent book Democratizing Innovation, Von Hippel (2005) suggests that open source development anticipates and expresses an ongoing development towards user-community based innovation. The emergence of the Internet and new tools based on information technology such as computeraided design (CAD), databases and platforms have made this development possible. The heterogeneous needs and capabilities of users can be mobilized to contribute to the design of new products. According to von Hippel, firms will increasingly externalize the development of ideas and prototypes to user communities and appropriate the results in their business without owning them. Red Hat, the vendor of Linux distributions, is a successful example of this business model.
Contingency: The Unanticipated Intertwining of Chains of Events and the Potential Multi-Usability of Artefacts The theory of serendipity or accidents has persisted in engineering literature and in the folklore tradition of chemistry (Roth-Bernstein, 1994). Royston has argued that ‘most of the important discoveries in organic chemistry have been made by accident’ (1989, p. xiii). The protagonists of the model have concluded that creative science-making cannot be planned (Merton & Barber, 2004). What, then, are the sources of contingency in a contextual and cultural conception of creativity? The first one is related to the impossibility of predicting the various historical developments that may turn out to be significant for the emergence of an innovation. The second is the basic difficulty of predicting the development of a technical artefact and its future uses (Rosenberg, 1995). Technological and cultural artefacts potentially have multiple uses in diverse activities or domains that are difficult to anticipate (Noteboom, 2001).3 In the following, examples of both sources of contingency are presented. An example of the difficulty of anticipating potential uses of a technological system is the emergence of the text message. The development of the specifications for a European GMS telephone system started in 1982. In 1983 Finnish engineers suggested in a meeting that the possibility of sending short text messages via the control line of mobile phones should be
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included in the specifications (Juurus, 2002). It was only one of the dozens of features included and remained unnoticed and unused for a decade. In the mid-1990s the first cellular phones with the capability for two-way text communication came onto the market. At the turn of the millennium, text messages grew into a major business for operators and constituted a part of daily life for the young. Text messages showed their value and strength during the week after the tsunami catastrophe of the 26 December 2004. It was instrumental in connecting the people in the catastrophe area with their relatives in Europe when other channels of communication were not available. The engineers who suggested adding the ‘feature’ to the specifications, nor anybody else, could ever have dreamt of such uses for the text-message transmission. Attempts to formulate a model of creativity or innovation face a basic problem of defining a logic of something that by definition does not yet exist. In innovation studies there is a long tradition of suggesting the critical success factors of innovations (Rothwell, 1992). Although they make sense, they are a limited means of orienting to the future. A distinguished example in innovation studies is Freeman’s (1987) attempts to discover the institutional and economic factors of Japanese society that would explain Japan’s superior technological and economical development compared with other industrial countries in the 1970s. While the institutional arrangements found were novel and impressive, they did not enable Japan to maintain its competitive edge in the 1990s. In dealing with the sources of the systemic unpredictability of human affairs, MacIntyre analyses the limits of the idea of organizational effectiveness based on predictability (1984, pp. 106–107). He considers that the inadequacy of this idea is most evident in the case of innovative adaptation. According to Bhaskar (1987), there is an asymmetry between explanation and prediction in the social sciences. What explanatory analysis can do is not predict, but only ‘inform our understanding of the present and illuminate projects and strategies for the future’ (Bhaskar, 1987, p. 219).
The Possibility of the Management of Creativity In the philosophy of science the problem of creativity was dealt with by drawing a distinction between the context of justification and the context of discovery (Reichenbach, 1938). The mainstream philosophy of science worked to define the method of science, that is, a general
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way of defining the objectivity of scientific statements and theories. In contrast, it regarded the task of finding a logic of discovery to be hard or impossible. Philosopher Marx Wartofsky thinks that a logic of discovery cannot supply an explanatory theory of invention, but, rather, a suggestive logic: ‘An account of examples, of actual exercises in judgment given specific boundary conditions, or problem situations, or a reconstruction of historical cases’ (Wartofsky, 1980, p. 15). In the same vein the historian of technology, Hughes constructs this logic in analysing historical cases of inventors’ activities: ‘The exploration of case histories . . . that analytical interpretation does bring credible – and not simplistic – order out of a chaos of facts’ (Hughes, 1978, p. 180). The emerging cultural view of creativity delineated in this article cannot be directly applied to management. However, the ideas developed by several research traditions do have implications for the management of creativity. The domain specificity of creativity calls for the mastery of the specific knowledge and practice of a cultural domain. It requires following up on the scientific, technical and economic developments as well as on the user activities of a domain. This task has been discussed in management literature in terms of developing core competencies and absorptive capabilities (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990). A vital question in managing creativity is related to the mobilization of heterogeneous cultural resources within domains and across the boundaries of domains. This will take place in horizontal networks that cannot be managed in the ways characteristic of the market and hierarchical organization. The development of information technology, especially the Internet, is rapidly giving rise to new forms of distributed creation and new types of communities. This development is still in its early stage, and new technologies have unprecented pontential for novel uses and organizational forms. Therefore, it is vital to learn from the organizational principles and critical problems of the open developmental model and other forms of Internet-mediated activities. The means (boundary-crossing artefacts) and rules of distributed creative work, such as the uses of the Internet, computerbased platforms, adequate forms of recognition and new types of agreements, including licences, should be understood far better than now and developed further to foster distributed creation. Some scholars think that necessary contingency creativity implies methodological irrationality, that is, the impossibility of the planning of creative activity (see Klages, 1967; © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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Merton & Barber, 2004). This position does have a point: it underlines the limitations of the methods of rational planning, such as ROR (Return on Research Index), that have also been applied to research and developmental activities since the 1960s. Some of the researchers look for the solution from abduction, a logic that Charles Peirce suggested for the formulation of new hypothesis and ideas. I am, however inclined to agree with Wartofsky, McIntyre and Bhaskar about finding a set of domain-specific analyses of current and emerging developments as the central way of learning about the changing conditions of creative solutions. Such terms as the ‘information revolution’, ‘network societies’ and the emergence of new kinds of Internet-mediated communities have been used to characterize the general direction of change in society and economic life. However, this change will assume content-specific and varied forms. The challenge for the management of creativity is to develop adequate means of studying and learning from the emerging problems, possibilities and patterns of conduct in these local activities. Instead of best practices, suggestive, potential or germ forms of new practices may be found to further the development of creativity.
Notes 1 Frederic Holmes, for instance, formulates the necessity of multidisciplinarity in the study of scientific creativity as follows: ‘The study of creative scientific activity belongs to no single discipline. History of science, philosophy of science, sociology of science and cognitive psychology are all prominent among the fields to claim to provide accounts of the processes involved’ (1989, p. 44). 2 Lee and Cole (2003, p. 641) estimated the number of contributors by extracting the email sent messages in the years 1995–2000 that included the words ‘oops’ and ‘patch’ in the subject headings and calculating the number of senders. They concluded that there were 1,562 bug reporters and 2,605 developers in the periphery of the community during that time. 3 Historian of technology Edward Constants states: ‘Except for the most trivial . . . of sense, technology of itself is both indeterminant and indeterminate. Neither its consequences nor its future development can be reliably predicted only from its prior development. Nor can any finite list of ex ante circumstances predict its future course’ (1989, p. 455). © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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Freeman, C. (1991) Network of innovators: A synthesis of research issues. Research Policy, 20(5), 499–514. Freeman, C. and Louçã, S. (2002) As time goes by. From industrial revolution to information revolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Fujimura, J. (1992) Crafting science: Standardized packages, boundary objects, and ‘translations’. In Pickering, A. (ed.), Science as practice and culture. University of Chicago Press, Chicago pp. 168– 211. Gadner, H. (1994) The creator’s patterns. In Feldman, D.H., Csikszentmihalyi, M. and Gardner, H. (eds.), Changing the world. A framework for the study of creativity Praeger, Westport, CT pp. 69–84. Getselz, J.W. (1987) Creativity, intelligence, and problem finding: retrospect and prospect. In Isaksen, S.C. (ed.), Frontiers of creativity research, Bearly, Buffalo pp. 88–102. Gruber, H.E. (1981) Darwin on man. A psychological study of scientific creativity. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Gruber, H.E. (1989) The evolving systems approach to creative work. In Gruber, H.E. and Wallace, D.B. (eds.), Creative people at work. Oxford University Press, New York pp. 3–24. Guilford, J.P. (1950) Creativity. American Psychologist, 5, 444–54. Holmes, F. (1989) Antoine Lavoisier and Hans Krebs. Two styles of scientific creativity. In Wallace, D. and Gruber, H.E. (eds.), Creative people at work. Oxford University Press, New York pp. 44– 68. Hughes, T.P. (1978) Inventors: the problems they chose, the ideas they have, and the inventions they make. In Kelly, A. and Kransberg, M. (eds.) Technological innovation: a critical view of current knowledge. San Francisco Press, San Francisco pp. 166–82. Juurus, K. (2002) Kuka keksi sen? [Who invented it?]. Helsingin Sanomat Kuukausiliite, 6, 40–49. Keating, P. and Cambrosio, A. (2003) Biomedical platforms. MIT Press, Cambridge MA. Klages, H. (1967) Rationalitet und Spontaneität, Innovationswege der Modernen Grossforchnung. C. Beterlsmann Verlag, Gutesloch. Koestler, A. (1978) The act of creation, Pan Books, London. Kris, E. (1952) Psychoanalytic explorations of art. Wiley, New York. Latour, B. (1987) Science in action. How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Open University Press, Milton Keynes. Lee, G.K. and Cole, R.C. (2003) From a firm-based to a community-based model of knowledge creation. The case of Linux kernel development. Organization Science, 14(6), 633–49. Leont’ev, A.N. (1978) Activity, consciousness and personality. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Lundvall, L-Å. (1988) Innovation as an interactive process: from user-producer interaction to the national system of innovation. In Dosi, G., Freeman, C., Nelson, R., Silverberg, G. and Soete, L. (eds.), Technical change and economic theory. Pinter Publishers, London pp. 349–70. Maslow, A.H. (1959) Creativity in self-actualizing people. In Anderson, H. (ed.) Creativity and its
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cultivation. Harper & Brothers, New York pp. 83– 95. MacIntyre. A. (1984) After virtue. A study in moral theory. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame. Merton, R.K. (1961) Singletons and multiples in scientific discovery. A chapter in the sociology of science. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 105(3), 470–86. Merton, R.K. (1973) Multiple discoveries a strategic research site. In Merton, R., The sociology of science. Theoretical and empirical Investigations. University of Chicago Press, Chicago pp. 371–82. Merton, R.K. and Barber, E. (2004) The travels and adventures of serenpidity. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Miettinen, R. (1996) Theories of invention and an industrial innovation. Science Studies, 9(2), 34– 48. Miettinen, R. (1999) The riddle of things. Activity theory and actor network theory as approaches of studying innovations. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 6(3), 170–95. Miettinen, R. (2000) The problem of creativity in technology studies: Invention as artifact construction and culturally distributed work. Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research. Working Papers 23, Helsinki. Miettinen, R. and Virkkunen, J. (2005) Epistemic objects, artifacts and organizational change. Organization, 12(3), 437–56. Moon, J.Y. and Sproull, L. (2002) Essence of Distributed Work: The Case of the Linux Kernel. In Hinds, P. and Kiesler, S. (eds.) Distributed Work. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA pp. 381–404. Noteboom, B. (2001) Learning and innovation in organizations and economics. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Oeche, R. (1990) Before the gates of excellence. The determinants of creative genius. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Powell, W.W. (1990) Neither market nor hierarchy: networks forms of organization. In Staw, B.M. and Cummings, L.L. (eds.), Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol 12, JAI Press, London pp. 295– 336. Powell, W.W., Koput, K.W. and Smith, K. (1996) Interorganizational collaboration and the locus on innovation: Networks of learning in biotechnology. Administrative Science Quarterly, 41, 116–45. Raymond, E.S. (1999) The Cathedral and the Bazaar. O’Reilly, Beijing. Reichenbach, H. (1938) Experience and prediction. An analysis of the foundations and structure of knowledge. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Rosenberg, N. (1995) Why technology forecast often fail? The Futurist June–August, 17–21. Roth-Berstein, R. (1994) The discovery process. Chemical Technology, May, 15–20. Rothwell, R. (1992) Successful industrial innovation: critical factors for the 1990s. R & D Management, 22(3), 221–39. Royston, R. (1989) Serendipity. Accidental discoveries of science. John Wiley & Sons, New York. Schaffer, S. (1986) Scientific discoveries and the end of natural philosophy. Social Studies of Science, 16, 387–420. © 2006 The Author Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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Schatzki, T.R., Knorr-Cetina, K. and von Savigny, E. (eds.) (2001) The practice turn in contemporary theory. Routledge, London. Star, L.S. and Griesemer, J.R. (1989) Institutional ecology, ‘translations’ and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39. Social Studies of Science, 19, 387–420. Suchman, L. (2001) Located accountabilities in technology production. Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, available at: http.//www. comp.lansc.uk/sociology/soc039ls.html, accessed 27 June 2001. Virkkunen, J. and Kuutti, K. (2000) Understanding organizational learning by focusing on ‘activity systems’. Accounting Management and Information Technologies, 10, 291–319. Von Hippel, E. (1988) The sources of innovation. Oxford University Press, New York. Von Hippel, E. (2005) Democratizing Innovation. MIT Press, Cambridge MA. Vygotsky, L.S. (1979) Mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Wartofsky, M. (1980) Scientific judgement; Creativity and discovery in scientific thought. In Nickles,
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T. (ed.), Scientific discovery: Case studies Boston Studies of Philosophy of Science 60. Reidel, Dordrecht pp. 1–16. Weber, S. (2004) The Success of Open Source. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Weisberg, R. (1993) Creativity. Beyond the myth of genius. W.H. Freeman & Company, New York.
Reijo Miettinen (reijo.miettinen@helsinki.fi) is a professor of Adult Education of the University Of Helsinki, Finland and the Vice Director of the Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research. His interests cover creativity as a key aspect of research and product development work. His group has studied research-based innovations, innovation networks, producer-user collaboration and recently the Internet-mediated open developmental model of software as an emerging form of distributed creativity.
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Sources of Innovation and Ideas in ICT Firms in Australia Paul W. Hyland, Jane Marceau and Terry R. Sloan This paper examines a sample of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) firms in Australia drawn from a wide range of product and service providers in the Sydney region. It researches the sources of information and ideas that firms utilize to sustain their competitive position through innovation. While the firms in the survey varied in size in terms of turnover, number of employees and level of business activity, most see themselves as innovative. Not all firms utilized the same sources of innovation-related knowledge and most used research and technology organizations (RTOs) or other publicly funded sources of information for help with ‘technical’ (standards etc) or trade issues. While ICT firms are often regarded as leadingedge developers of new ideas, this research indicated that ICT firms still see their sales force, customers and suppliers as the most important sources of innovation knowledge and ideas.
Introduction
M
ost observers think of the ICT sector as one that most characterizes the ‘new’ economy and one that lives off successfully innovating new products and services. Most organizations and sectors are part of, or are aligned with, the information sector or information economy in the sense that IT plays a major part in their operational activities. The study of ICT firms reported here was part of a larger project examining the growth of research and technology organizations (RTOs) in Australia, and the utilization and funding of these organizations by local firms. This article examines the innovation trajectories of a small sample of ICT firms that are producing new products and services for the Australian market, with a view to examining the nature of the innovation processes undertaken and the sources of innovation-related information used by these ‘hi tech’ companies to gain their innovation ideas and related knowledge. We also examine their use of publicly funded innovation services. In this examination we consider the firms use of exploitative and explorative trajectories to acquire innovative ideas and information. In the main, firms seek ideas for new products from customers, competitors, and in a few cases, research bodies such as universities. Sources of information that can lead to exploitative new products
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include government authorities, universities, technical colleges, industry bodies and RTOs. For example, in 2005 the Australian Meat and Livestock Association (MLA) set up a mandatory system for tagging cattle using radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. The introduction of this RFID system has the potential to produce a demand for new products for farmers wishing to maximize the benefits of the tracking and tagging system. This mandatory system was announced in 2004, so ICT companies could use that information in their new product development planning. Government policies in Australia and Europe are increasingly encouraging businesses to work with RTOs and universities to tap into the knowledge, skills and expertise resident in these organizations. Moreover, governments not only want industry to tap into and use the expertise that exists in these publicly funded institutions, they also want industry to pay for the expertise and to provide a commercial focus for research carried out in the RTOs. Where this policy focus has been successful, RTOs can be seen as having moved to a ’hybrid’ position, part public and part private, both in orientation and in funding sources, compared with the homogeneous and separate modes of public and private operation that prevailed in previous periods of public administration and funding. RTO performance measures, such as the only recently © 2006 The Authors Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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modified requirement for CSIRO (Australia’s peak science research organization) to generate 30 percent of its revenue externally, increasingly require them to trade in services and generate revenue and commercial value in addition to their traditional output activities such as educating professionals and publishing research results in the scientific and professional literature. Innovation-related knowledge is thus now widely available in the local areas in which most ICT and other firms operate. The question remains however: are ICT firms utilizing and accessing this expertise and putting money into these hybrid RTOs, or are they using more market-focused and in particular more client-focused sources? In deciding on innovation trajectories firms can explore new technologies or radically new ideas for products that are high risk, if successful are high return, can have uncertain and widespread effects on existing products and have a high uncertainty of market acceptance. Such a trajectory would mean that a firm has the capacity and capabilities needed to search for and identify new technologies or ideas that can be potentially commercialized. While many firms set out on an exploratory trajectory, many fail for a variety of reasons, including lack of capital and poor commercialization capabilities. Firms on an exploratory trajectory would be expected to be scanning for ideas in a network that includes RTOs and university research centres as well as start-ups, and using their own R&D staff for highly speculative research. The other innovation trajectory is an exploitative trajectory in which firms seek to exploit existing skills and technologies to maintain or improve their competitive position in the market. An exploitative trajectory is relatively low risk, and the products developed can provide good short-term returns and have a fairly certain acceptance and outcome in the market. In exploratory trajectories firms are more likely to working with customers and suppliers in their supply chain and scanning competitors ideas rather than looking for radical ideas. Firms set on an exploitative trajectory will be maintaining an existing network that includes supply-chain partners, industry associations, government bodies and standards associations. They will use their network to gain short-term market advantages over competitors rather than seeking high risk long-term advantages through radical ideas. Many firms attempt to maintain both an exploratory and an exploitative trajectory so that they can ensure both long and short-term returns and maintain primacy in the market, but as March (1991) points out, it is difficult to balance exploration and exploitation in an organizational setting. © 2006 The Authors Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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Innovation and Sources of Ideas Product/service, process or organizational innovation is widely recognized as a cumulative process that includes idea generation, idea evaluation and product development, and methods for best implementing new ideas. Idea generation is critical to new product development (Troy, Szymanski & Varadarajan, 2001), although the majority of ideas generated often turn out not to make sense in commercial terms (see e.g. Stasch, Lonsdale & LaVenka, 1992). The development of a new or innovative product is expensive and its success is uncertain, even if the idea is perceived as ‘good’. In an attempt to improve the success of the process from new idea generation to commercialization, in order to reduce market failures, firms are continually seeking new sources of ideas and advice. In recent years research and technology organizations (RTOs) and universities have been encouraged to become sources of commercial ideas and knowledge for businesses seeking to commercialize innovations. Not all universities and RTOs have been equally successful in these endeavours, however. University researchers are often regarded as centres of excellence in exploring and delivering new knowledge, which may result in new concepts and product ideas (Logar et al., 2001). From a public-sector perspective, working with firms enables academics to develop alliances with the private sector to commercialize research outputs, while private-sector organizations can align themselves with academic institutions using the research outputs of these organizations to enhance new product development. This mutual interest offers private-sector organizations a potentially significant avenue of new product ideas (Logar et al., 2001). Firms that scan academic research may come across ideas for new products, or the findings of the research can stimulate new ideas that are then sold to firms (Peterson, 1988). The potential role of the public sector as a source of product exploratory ideas and innovations is often overlooked in practice, however, even by ‘science-intensive’ firms that are exploratory in their product performance. Not all innovations involve completely new products or services and many innovations emerge from the need for the extension of a product line or from an existing product family. The stakes are too high in today’s corporate world for companies to depend on a stagnant product line so the exploitation of line extension concepts need new ideas. Major sources include user input and feedback on existing products, scanning competitors’ product
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strategies and emerging consumer trends. The ongoing search for product improvement from consumer perceptions and measures to enhance manufacturing efficiency and product or service delivery can also themselves lead to successful line extensions (Katz, 1993). The needs and ideas of suppliers, competitors and customers all need to be considered, while other external environmental factors, including economic, regulatory, social, political and ecological variables can also provide sources of novel ideas (Connell et al., 2001). The regulatory environment may, for example, provide opportunities for customized products to meet regulatory requirements in areas such as pollution and emission control, or indicate the need for new services to assist businesses to meet regulatory requirements.
Innovation Trajectories: Exploration or Exploitation In his work on organizational learning, March (1991, p. 71) maintains that exploration has come to include activities encapsulated in terms such as ‘search, variation, risk taking, experimentation, play, flexibility, discovery, innovation’, while exploitation includes terms such as ‘refinement, choice, production, efficiency, selection implementation, execution’. In subsequent work, Levinthal and March (1993, p. 105) clarified the concepts defining exploration as ‘the pursuit of knowledge, of things that might come to be known’, and exploitation as ‘the use and development of things already known’. In March’s (1991) research, he points out that exploration has a high level of uncertainty, requires longer timeframes and has more diffuse effects than exploitation activities. Many firms are more comfortable focusing on exploitation as it allows for ‘the refinement and extension of existing competences, technologies and paradigms’ and from a performance perspective the returns are ‘positive, proximate and predicable’ (March, 1991, p. 85). On the other hand exploration is more likely to have uncertain and negative returns. In most cases March (1991, p. 85) argues that firms seeking to be globally competitive and to ‘finish near the top’ place an emphasis on exploitation, while those firms with little or nothing to loose can emphasize exploration. So, depending on the strategic positioning of a firm they will select an innovation trajectory that may be only exploitation or exploration, or a combination of both, but as March (1991, p. 74) observed, when firms seek to be dominant in a market they will experience difficulties in ‘defining and arranging an appropriate balance
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between exploration and exploitation’. Several authors have recently used the explore/ exploit dichotomy to investigate R&D activities, innovation processes and the impact of alliances on product development. So different players in an industry play different roles in relation to product development, and select different innovation trajectories, as might be expected. Some players generate new and novel ideas and concepts, while other players exploit existing ideas and extend product lines rather than explore the possibilities of entirely new products that are radically different. Thus, for instance, information on competitors’ products is usually gathered to gain ideas and exploit existing, new technological innovations or to support a market positioning decision (Azzone & Pozza, 2003), while analysing the product successes and failures of other companies can indicate broadly what consumers are looking for. It is often the job of the sales force to provide consumer feedback, particularly in the highly competitive ICT sector where the sales force is an especially important interface between consumers and suppliers. Rather than providing specific new product ideas, monitoring of competitors’ activities in sales, marketing, distribution and public relations provides broader information on what works and what is less successful, and what can be exploited or avoided (Katz, 1993). Other researchers, such as Rothaermel and Deeds (2004), have linked the explorationexploitation framework of organizational learning to strategic alliances and argue that the relationship between the businesses in alliances and their new product development trajectory depends on the type of the alliance. From their perspective a product development trajectory begins with exploration alliances involving products in a phase, then involve exploitation alliances, and lastly exploitation alliances that see products launched onto the market. As a business grows and develops core capabilities, it tends to reduce this product development trajectory to discover, develop and commercialize product extensions through vertical integration. Koza and Lewin (1998) applied March’s (1991) model of organizational learning to a firm’s strategic alliances and they argue that a firm’s decision to enter an alliance depends upon the decision to exploit an existing capability or to explore for new opportunities’ (Koza & Lewin, 1998, p. 256). Similarly, Rothaermel (2001) has used an exploration/exploitation dichotomy to examine inter-firm co-operation. Rothaermel (2001, p. 690) argues that firms motivated by a need for organizational learning will enter into exploration partnerships within networks, © 2006 The Authors Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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while firms wishing to access complimentary competences or capabilities will enter into exploitation partnerships within supply-chain networks. Rothaermel and Deeds (2004) have used March’s (1991) exploration-exploitation framework to characterize the type of idea seeking and type of alliances that businesses engage in at differing stages of the product development process. This work built on Rothaermel’s (2001) earlier work on networks, alliances or partnering relationships in biotechnology, which argued that inter-firm relationships can assist existing dominant firms to access emerging technologies, and can make it possible for start-ups to successfully commercialize exploratory technologies and opportunities. A firm’s choice of the type of alliance can be determined by the decision to either explore for new fields or exploit existing technologies and products (Koza & Lewin, 1998). Holmqvist (2004) argues that this interplay of exploitation and exploration takes place both within and between businesses. Beckman, Haunschild and Phillips (2004) maintain that expanding to new network partners is similar to the concepts of exploration, while extending the relationships with existing partners is similar to exploitation. Therefore, firms that scan outside their normal supply-chain networks are more likely to be exploring for innovations than firms who are attempting to exploit existing opportunities and ideas. In their research, Beckman, Haunschild and Phillips (2004) recognized that Pfeffer and Salancik (1978) were amongst the earliest researchers to identify that firms expand their networks by engaging with new actors in an effort to reduce the uncertainty and constraint that is generated when actors in a network become dependent on one another. Others, such as Kogut (1988), and Powell, Koput and Smith-Doerr (1996), have noted that actors expand their networks to explore new practices and technologies. According to Beckman, Haunschild and Phillips (2004), firms are attempting to reduce firm specific uncertainty through new relationships within new networks. This is an exploration trajectory because the firms are seeking to diversify their information sources and the new relationships are more likely to provide new and different information than existing relationships. Furthermore they maintain that firms will pursue an exploitative trajectory and reinforce their networks when there is market uncertainty; in these situations firms build additional interactions with existing alliance partners. In their work on industrial R&D Cesaroni, Di Minin and Piccaluga (2005) see exploitation and exploration as outcomes of strategic © 2006 The Authors Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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choices. They propose that in exploitation trajectories firms either leverage their R&D investments within their main operations or firms with a dominant, emerging design can leverage their leading position through strategic alliance, so securing complimentary assets. Cesaroni, Di Minin and Piccaluga (2005) argue that an explorative trajectory is needed when old complementary assets are no longer sufficient to maintain a leadership position. This means that, as March (1991, p. 72) suggests, to survive firms must effectively select among forms, routines or practices, and success and survival are also dependent on the ‘generation of new alternative practices’. Scanning the existing environment and existing networks and alliances for alternatives and looking at what competitors are doing provides potential alternative practices and ideas. The future, however, is also important. Here, one critical group of exploratory, idea generators that looks to the future is lead users. Lead users combine two characteristics: they are motivated to innovate because they want innovation-related benefits from a solution to their needs and they are the first to see the need for an innovation. According to Lilien et al. (2002), lead users live in the future relative to other target-market users, experiencing today what other users will experience later. Lilien and colleagues found that lead users’ ideas are significantly more novel than are ideas generated by non-lead users. They have greater potential to develop ideas into an entire product line, while non-lead user ideas mainly produced ideas for product improvements and extensions to existing product lines (Lilien et al., 2002).
Methodology The study reported on here was small and was considered exploratory in this field in Australia as there has been no previous examination in Australia of the nature of interaction between RTOs and innovative firms. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire, sent by post to a sample of firms selected from a listing of ICT product and service providers listed on the Kompass database. Selection of firms sampled was limited to those in the greater Sydney region as this region had the greatest concentration of ICT firms in Australia. A sample of 120 organizations received the questionnaire and, after telephone follow-up, 45 respondents returned completed questionnaires. In some cases respondents did not answer all questions, and the number of respondents to each question is indicated in each figure or table.
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The ICT industry is only loosely held together by the idea that they are involved in computing and telecommunication technologies. There is no clear product focus, and many IT and micro-chip technologies are used in a wide range of applications across sectors such as finance and manufacturing. ICT suppliers and component suppliers were identified by creating a dataset of products, services and bundled products and services that are either used by ICT firms or supplied by ICT firms to their customers. The suppliers of these products and services are then identified from a commercial dataset (Kompass) and this provides a population frame that enables the identification of firms across the ICT supply chain. This also provides a wider definition of ICT firms as it includes more dimensions of the supply chain. In this study we include suppliers and users of ICT products and services such as plastics products for the electrical and electronics industries, telecommunication transmission equipment, electrical and electronic instruments and apparatus for measuring, electronic data-processing services, telecommunication network services, and from sectors including high-end users in the leisure and entertainment industry, such as casinos.
The Australian ICT Sector According to the OECD (2001), by the late 1990s the ICT sector remained a relatively small part of the Australian economy, and its share in the total business sector in 1998–1999 was 4.1 percent for value added and 2.6 percent for employment. In 2000–2001 the industry was overwhelmingly composed of small and small-medium size firms (almost 80 percent employing 1–4 people). In the same year, less than 1 percent of firms employed 100 or more people, but these accounted for 55 percent of employment and 72 percent of income (Department of Communications Information Technology and the Arts, 2003). The ICT sector was only a modest contributor to business sector GDP growth between 1992 and 1999 (from 5 percent to 8 percent on average, according to the period considered) but the potential for innovation and collaboration with RTOs seems considerable, as R&D intensity in the ICT sector (ratio of R&D to value added) in 2000–2001 was about 4.6 percent, more than six times as large as for the economy as a whole, and R&D expenditure grew by 50 percent between 1996–1997 and 2000– 2001. Most of that expenditure (83 percent) was by private-sector firms (ABS, 2004; DCITA, 2003). In terms of value added, tele-
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communications services were the largest component (almost 52 percent) of the sector. Other ICT services contributed over 40 percent, and manufacturing only 8 percent. In terms of employment, wages, salaries and production, the significance of the telecommunications services sector was somewhat diminished, with ‘other’ ICT services contributing 50 percent of overall ICT employment and production, and more than 57 percent for wages and salaries. Australia remains very highly dependent on imports of manufactured ICT goods to meet domestic demand.
Results The level of spending on research and development has been widely used as an indicator of a firm’s propensity to innovate and its investment in innovation. Figure 1 shows the distribution of firms by their spending in R&D, and an indication of the types of innovative activities they intended to engage in in the future, and shows that spending on R&D is unevenly spread throughout the sample of firms in this exploratory study. The respondents reported in Figure 1 thus engaged in a range of innovative activities, including process and organizational change, and some were investing considerable percentages of their turnover in R&D. Given this investment, it is interesting to note that more firms spending less than 5 percent on R&D indicated that they were not undergoing product or process change or changes in work organization and coordination. A similar number of firms were involved in changes in the firms positioning, although the percentage was not high in either category. The change with the highest relative response rate was process change in firms investing in excess of 5 percent of turnover in R&D. Firms investing in process changes are more likely to be interested in enhancing and exploiting operational effectiveness by improving their processes internally and building on existing process skills than investing in explorative product development. When examining the nature of innovation activities by the turnover of firms (see Figure 2) an interesting pattern emerges, with firms of all sizes being involved significantly in product and process innovations. But in terms of organizational changes and market repositioning, small firms are less active in these areas than medium-sized firms and large firms. In this sample it would appear that medium-sized firms (with a turnover of $5– $25 million) are able to invest in a wider range of innovative activities. © 2006 The Authors Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing
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100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10
R&D 5% Yes
>5%
Market_Position Change 5%
Organizational Change 5%
Process Change 5%
Product Change $25M
Market Position Change $5M-$25M
$25M
$25M
Process Change $5M-$25M
$25M
Product Change $5M-$25M
