Abstract
Candace Jones (Boston College, USA)
Silviya Svejenova (ESADE Business School, Spain)
Jesper Strandgaard (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark)
This special issue of Organization Studies welcomes scholarly work on the nature, sources, and value of innovation in creative industries, as well as on the roles and relationships of actors who drive these processes (Bechky, 2006; Jones, 2010). In particular, we invite explorations on the activities and interactions of misfits, mavericks and mainstream individual and collective agents (Peterson & Berger, 1971; Becker, 1982; White & White, 1965) in the emergence of radical or incremental novelty (e.g. genres, forms of production and consumption, new business models) that transforms creative industries (Jones & Thornton, 2005; Svejenova, Planellas & Vives, 2010).
Creative industries encompass individuals and collectives engaged in conceiving, developing, and distributing artifacts and experiences with aesthetic properties and symbolic functions, such as books, music, films, paintings, or dance and theatre performances, design, fashion, and architecture. Their strong dependence on originality and novelty for distinctiveness (Alvarez, Mazza, Strandgaard Pedersen, & Svejenova, 2005), as new genres and styles get conceived, theorized, legitimized, diffused and consumed by a range of audiences, makes them a valuable setting for advancing theory on the originators, genesis, and trajectories of innovation.
We seek contributions that allow unpacking important dynamics of how newness of products, categories and consumption patterns comes into being and transforms art worlds, fields or industries (White & White, 1965; Becker, 1982; DiMaggio, 1991; Hirsch, 2000). We are open to a diverse set of theoretical and empirical methodologies, as well as to a range of settings. We are particularly interested in longitudinal studies–either qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods–examining change over the course of an industry, the trajectory of a genre, or the life cycle of individual artists or collectivities of innovators. Specifically, we encourage studies that take language and discourse in framing an innovation into account (Jones & Livne-Tarandach, 2008), as well as processes of innovation co-creation between creatives and their audiences, benefitting from the opportunities opened up by social media. In addition to studies on how innovation finds its way in consolidated creative industries, such as music, publishing and art, we invite research on industries that have only recently started acquiring “artistic” recognition, such cuisine, wine, video games, or new media (Svejenova, Mazza & Planellas, 2007; Tschang, 2007). Finally, we strongly encourage comparative studies (across creative organizations, industries, as well as across counties) and, in particular, submissions that capture innovation in creative industries from contexts that are largely underrepresented in scholarly work, such as emerging economies (Khaire & Wadhwani, forthcoming).
We look for submissions that address four main domains of inquiry on the origins and trajectories of innovation in creative industries - who, what, how, and where:
(1) Who originates innovation? This can be individuals, teams, organizations, communities, or movements of the following kinds:
- misfits who defy or bypass the rules of an established industry and remain isolated from existing art worlds; - mavericks who seek to transform a creative industry by reshaping existing art worlds or creating new ones; - mainstreams who engage in incremental innovation and exploit existing practices and structures in industries and/or art worlds.
Thus, we invite submissions that shed light on differences and commonalities between central and peripheral actors in initiating an innovation trajectory. Further, “who” can also be about the role of different audiences in the origination and spread of new styles or genres.
(2) What types of innovations shift the nature and value of:
- ideas, such as new styles, genres, or practices; - structures, such as industry concentration, production and distribution roles and systems, or co-creation through online communities; - resources, such as symbolic and social capital, as well as business models?
We hope to receive manuscripts both on radical and marginal innovations, as well as origins and trajectories of novelty in traditional and new media.
(3) How innovation occurs such as its processes in terms of stages and mechanisms:
- conceiving novelty: drift, replication, improvisation; - creating novel products: meaning making and collaboration; - converting novelty into value: attaching and appropriating value from artistic innovation.
We welcome studies that examine the trajectories of innovation, from the spark to their death and obsolescence, as well as the forms of resistance by representatives of traditional styles and genres in the face of avant-garde innovations.
(4) Where does innovation occur, identifying the particularities of and comparisons among the contexts of artistic innovation in different settings:
- profit- and passion-maximizing ventures; - different types of creative industries, organizations, and art worlds; - artistic innovation in advanced and emerging economies.
We encourage scholarly work that compares and contrasts innovation in different contexts, not only among creative industries, but also of creative industries with other, rather “humdrum”, industries to tease out specificities and commonalities.
Specific questions may include but are not limited to:
- What are the pathways to innovation in creative industries? What drives originality? What kills creativity?
- How is a new style or genre created, recognized and continuously updated? How do institutionalized logics stifle or facilitate the emergence of new styles and genres? What is the interplay between novelty that sparks new products and categories and tradition that upholds existing products and categories?
- How are rhetoric and framing used to co-create meaning between creatives and their audiences about an artistic innovation?
- How do collaborative circles and networks provide resources needed for novel ideas to emerge, persist, and thrive? How do technologies, such as new media, influence the spread of novelty in creative industries? How does innovation differ, if at all, between traditional and new media?
- How is radically new creative work noticed and valued? How does its value change throughout the career of an artist or the trajectory of a style?
- How do policy makers stifle artistic innovation or, in turn, help it thrive?
- How does artistic innovation take place in the context of new media?
Submissions should contribute to consolidating a research agenda on creative industries as a domain of inquiry. In addition, they should offer practical implications for organizations in creative contexts as well as those from other settings, from private companies to public agencies, which increasingly demand reinvention and creativity. Finally, they may also provide insights for policy makers who are involved in promoting and supporting growth of creative industries in their domains of responsibility.
Please submit papers through the journal’s online submission system, SAGE track. Please visit SAGE track http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/orgstudies, create your user account (if you have not done so already), and on “Manuscript Type” choose the following: SI: Misfits, Mavericks and Mainstreams: Drivers of Innovation in Creative Industries.
All papers that will enter the reviewing process will be double-blindly reviewed following the journal’s normal review process and criteria. Any papers which may be accepted but will not be included in the Special Issue will be published in an ordinary issue at a later point in time. For further information please contact any of the Guest Editors for this special issue: Candace Jones (Boston College)