Contributing to the creative economy imaginary: universities and the creative sector

© 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This paper explores the relationship between the creative economy and universities. As funders, educators and research bodies, universities have a complicated relationship with the creative economy. They propagate its practice, ‘buying-in’ to the rhetoric and models of creative value, particularly in teaching, research and knowledge exchange. Third mission activities also play a role, seeking to affect change in the world ‘outside’ academia through collaboration, partnerships, commercialisation and social action. For arts and humanities disciplines, these practices have focused almost exclusively on the creative sector in recent years. This paper asks how the third mission has been a site where universities have modified their function in relation to the creative economy. It considers the mechanisms by which universities have been complicit in propagating the notion of the creative economy, strengthening particular constructions of the idea at the level of policy and everyday practice. It also briefly asks how a focus on alternative academic practice and institutional forms might offer possibilities for developing a more critical creative economy. The argument made is that the university sector is an important agent in the shaping and performance of the creative economy, and that we should take action if we wish to produce a more diverse, equitable space for learning, researching, and being under the auspices of ‘creativity’

Open-system orchestration as a relational source of sensing capabilities: Evidence from a venture association

Research on innovation networks has highlighted the pivotal role that actors with more prominence and power, such as hub firms, may play in orchestrating the activities of other network members along a collective innovation effort. Our study examined the undertheorized, but no less important, type of orchestration that characterizes other organizations, such as business incubators and venture associations, who seek to support the dispersed entrepreneurial efforts of network members. We refer to this type as ‘open-system’ orchestration, as opposed to the commonly studied ‘closed-system’ type performed by hub firms. Our findings reveal how the processes of open-system orchestration differ markedly from those of closed-system orchestration, and detail how these processes influence the micro-foundations of network members’ sensing capabilities. By doing so, we also offer empirical substantiation and theoretical elaboration to the idea that dynamic capabilities might not reside exclusively inside firms, but could be co-created relationally with other parties in the business ecosystem

The Anthropophagic Organization: How Innovations Transcend the Temporary in a Project-based Organization

This article shows how innovations in projects may be diffused successfully within a large project-based organization (PBO) and how they ‘live on’ through their adaptation. We draw on the metaphorical notion of anthropophagy, literally ‘human cannibalism’, which is used to explain the appropriation of otherness resulting in ongoing organizational life. Prior organization literature has stressed the difficulties of the transition from the temporary to the permanent, especially the failure of database-oriented approaches, and argued that these barriers may be overcome with repeatable standardized templates. In contrast we show that multiple innovations may be adopted within the same PBO, which manifest as differentiated, combined forms. Cases in the large energy and engineering company, Petrobras, show a systematic innovation process involving subject experts, but centrally a database containing records of 1104 mandatory and discretionary innovations. The article analyses these data, process documentation and observations of 15 completed innovation projects. The article argues that in addition to technical factors the anthropophagic attitude motivates adopters to take on the innovations of others with the appetising prospect of appropriation and adaptation

Restricted vision Strategizing under uncertainty

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN035107 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Achieving Complementarities of Size Advantages in New Product Development - the Case of Multimedia in Japan

The new product development process can often benefit from inputs by large and small firms. These benefits are often difficult to achieve as both large and small firms have particular problems in working cooperatively with one another. Effective large-small firm collaboration in new product development is more easily achieved where, as in Japan, institutions and government policies exist to facilitate communications between potential partners, converge expectations of large and small firms, and overcome some of the cost constraints and uncertainties facing new partnerships. By analysing the emergence of multimedia technology in Japan it is shown that large-small firm collaboration in new product development is valuably supported by a variety of institutional arrangements