59,039 research outputs found
Creative methodologies for understanding a creative industry
The chapter presents a conceptual framework for the identification and analysis of value creating and value capture systems within creative industry contexts based on theoretical and empirical studies. It provides a ‘digital economy’ perspective of the creative industries as a micro-level example of a wider analytical problem, which is how society changes itself. The increasing level of innovation and creativity produces greater levels of instability in social structures (habits, norms etc.) Completely new industries can arise (and ‘creatively’ destroy old ones) as new stabilised patterns form, particularly where entry costs are tumbling, such as digital milieu. Observations of workshops over several days with creative groups, interviews with creative enterprises, literature reviews on creative industries, business models and value systems have informed the analysis and conceptualisation. As a result we present a conceptual framework that we suggest can capture how novelty arises as emergent order over time. We have extended previous work that investigates the significance of emergence in theorising entrepreneurship into an exploration of how to articulate the creation and flow of value and effective ontology in a creative landscape. In the digital economy, the creative industries revolve around dynamic, innovative and often unorthodox collaborations, whereby numerous large, small and micro-businesses come together for the duration of a project, then disband and form new partnerships for the next project. Research designs must therefore address multiple contexts and levels presenting an analytical challenge to researchers. Methodologically, we suggest that the framework has analytical potential to support the collection of data: ordering and categorising empirical observations concerning how different phenomena emerge over time across multiple levels of analysis and contexts. Conceptually, the work broadens the notions of ‘business model’ to consider value creating systems and particular states reached by those systems in their evolution. The work contributes new concepts for researchers in this field and a wider framework for practitioners and policy makers
Complexity as Process: Complexity Inspired Approaches to Composition
This article examines the use of Complexity Theory as an inspiration for the creation of new musical works, and highlights problems and possible solutions associated with its application as a compositional tool. In particular it explores how the philosophy behind Complexity Theory affects notions of process-based composition, indeterminacy in music and the performer/listener/environment relationship, culminating in providing a basis for the understanding of music creation as an active process within a context. The author presents one of his own sound installations, Cross-Pollination, as an example of a composition inspired and best understood from the philosophical position as described in Complexity Theory
Emergentism and musicology: an alternative perspective to the understanding of dissonance.
In this paper we develop an approach to musicology within the
discussion of emergentism. First of all, we claim that some theories of
musicology could be insufficient in describing and explaining musical
phenomena when emergent properties are not taken into account. Actually,
musicology usually considers just syntactical elements, structures and
processes and puts only a little emphasis, if any, over perceptual aspects of
human hearing. On the other hand, recent research efforts are currently being
directed towards an understanding of the emergent properties of auditory
perception, especially in fields such as cognitive science. Such research leads
to other views concerning old issues in musicology and could create a fruitful
approach, filling the gap between musicology and auditory perception
An emergence perspective on entrepreneurship: processes, structure and methodology
This paper explores entrepreneurship from the perspective of emergence, drawing on literature in
complexity theory, social theory and entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is conceptualised as the
production of emergence, or emergent properties, via a simple model of initial conditions, processes of
emergence that produces emergent properties at multiple levels (new phenomena such as products,
services, firms, networks, patterns of behaviour, identities). Conceptualisation through emergence thus
embraces actors, context, processes and (structural) outcomes. This paper builds on previous work that
theorises the relationship between entrepreneurship and social change. We extend that work by
considering the methodological implications of relating processes of entrepreneurship to the emergence
of new phenomena
Conditioned emergence: a dissipative structures approach to transformation
This paper presents a novel framework for the management of organisational transformation, defined here as a relatively rapid transition from one archetype to another. The concept of dissipative structures, from the field of complexity theory, is used to develop and explain a specific sequence of activities which underpin effective transformation. This sequence integrates selected concepts from the literatures on strategic change, organisational learning and business processes; in so doing, it introduces a degree of prescriptiveness which differentiates it from other managerial interpretations of complexity theory. Specifically, it proposes a three-stage process: first, the organisation conditions the outcome of the transformation process by articulating and reconfiguring the rules which underpin its deep structure; second, it takes steps to move from its current equilibrium and, finally, it moves into a period where positive and negative feedback loops become the focus of managerial attention. The paper argues that by managing at the level of deep structure in social systems, organisations can gain some influence over self-organising processes which are typically regarded as unpredictable in the natural sciences. However, the paper further argues that this influence is limited to archetypal features and that detailed forms and behaviours are emergent properties of the system. Two illustrative case-vignettes are presented to give an insight into the practical application of the model before conclusions are reached which speculate on the implications of this approach for strategy research
Emergence and Reduction Combined in Phase Transitions
In another paper (Butterfield 2011), one of us argued that emergence and
reduction are compatible, and presented four examples illustrating both. The
main purpose of this paper is to develop this position for the example of phase
transitions. We take it that emergence involves behaviour that is novel
compared with what is expected: often, what is expected from a theory of the
system's microscopic constituents. We take reduction as deduction, aided by
appropriate definitions. Then the main idea of our reconciliation of emergence
and reduction is that one makes the deduction after taking a limit of an
appropriate parameter . Thus our first main claim will be that in some
situations, one can deduce a novel behaviour, by taking a limit .
Our main illustration of this will be Lee-Yang theory. But on the other hand,
this does not show that the limit is physically real. For our second
main claim will be that in such situations, there is a logically weaker, yet
still vivid, novel behaviour that occurs before the limit, i.e. for finite .
And it is this weaker behaviour which is physically real. Our main illustration
of this will be the renormalization group description of cross-over phenomena.Comment: 24 pp, v2: one minor change. Contribution to the Frontiers of
Fundamental Physics (FFP 11) Conference Proceeding
Sustaining entrepreneurial business: a complexity perspective on processes that produce emergent practice
This article examines the management practices in an entrepreneurial small firm which sustain the business. Using a longitudinal qualitative case study, four general processes are identified (experimentation, reflexivity, organising and sensing), that together provide a mechanism to sustain the enterprise. The analysis draws on concepts from entrepreneurship and complexity science. We suggest that an entrepreneur’s awareness of the role of these parallel processes will facilitate their approaches to sustaining and developing enterprises. We also suggest that these processes operate in parallel at multiple levels, including the self, the business and inter-firm networks. This finding contributes to a general theory of entrepreneurship. A number of areas for further research are discussed arising from this result
Evolution of Swarm Robotics Systems with Novelty Search
Novelty search is a recent artificial evolution technique that challenges
traditional evolutionary approaches. In novelty search, solutions are rewarded
based on their novelty, rather than their quality with respect to a predefined
objective. The lack of a predefined objective precludes premature convergence
caused by a deceptive fitness function. In this paper, we apply novelty search
combined with NEAT to the evolution of neural controllers for homogeneous
swarms of robots. Our empirical study is conducted in simulation, and we use a
common swarm robotics task - aggregation, and a more challenging task - sharing
of an energy recharging station. Our results show that novelty search is
unaffected by deception, is notably effective in bootstrapping the evolution,
can find solutions with lower complexity than fitness-based evolution, and can
find a broad diversity of solutions for the same task. Even in non-deceptive
setups, novelty search achieves solution qualities similar to those obtained in
traditional fitness-based evolution. Our study also encompasses variants of
novelty search that work in concert with fitness-based evolution to combine the
exploratory character of novelty search with the exploitatory character of
objective-based evolution. We show that these variants can further improve the
performance of novelty search. Overall, our study shows that novelty search is
a promising alternative for the evolution of controllers for robotic swarms.Comment: To appear in Swarm Intelligence (2013), ANTS Special Issue. The final
publication will be available at link.springer.co
- …