INTERPRETING INNOVATION. Design Creativity Art

The book aims at discussing the three key words - design, creativity and art - analyzed in their reciprocal influence and observed from the perspective of a management scholar who is questioning the relevance of these subjects for future research and for the practice of management. Reflecting on contributions coming from different fields of investigation both in management literature and outside it, and adopting examples and evidence emerging from the observation of cross-disciplinary languages, the work proposes a possible interpretation of why and how management, and more specifically the debate on innovation, has been so strongly affected by a number of aesthetic dimensions. Is management losing its focus and relevance? Or, on the contrary, are we facing a process of reciprocal enrichment, which could produce beneficial effects on both academic debate and managerial practice? In an attempt to answer these open questions, the architecture of the work is made up of three main modules. The first chapter starts the journey, interpreting innovation through a reflection on the evolving role of design as a key discourse and as a central practice in the innovation process. Design has assumed a central role in management, at first as an ingredient of innovation (Brown, 2009; Martin, 2009; Verganti, 2003), but also as an opportunity to re-focus the management discourse (Boland and Collopy, 2004), following the trajectory started by the seminal work of Simon (1969) that emphasized the relevance of design for management scholars. Nevertheless, the role of design remains blurred and produces tension between what emerges as the strategic role played by a new class of designers and the creative inadequacy of managers looking for new tools. The second chapter attempts to tackle the intricate debate on creativity, moving between a classical innovation approach and a perspective focused on the cultural and creative industries as possible fields of an extreme investigation. The notion of creativity originating in the philosophical myth of Plato has largely abandoned the romantic idea of a genius embracing the aim of combining the notions of new and valuable (Amabile 1983; 1996; Amabile et al., 2005). Nevertheless, the social dimension of the concept increases the complexity of a debate whose borders are ill defined and where there is a certain tendency to exploit creativity as a buzzword (Pratt and Jeffcutt, 2009). As one of the key ingredients of the innovation process, creativity occupies a central position in the literature involved, identifying in art and culture the Promised Land where creativity seems to be naturally grounded and management could rejuvenate itself. This second chapter starts exploring to prepare the final approach to the art world. The third chapter closes the circle and from the art world goes back to the issue of innovation where the journey took its first steps. In the context where products are symbolic constructs (Peterson and Berger, 1975; Hirsch, 1972) in balance between market satisfaction and art progression, innovation is a key strategic process (Hesmondhalgh and Pratt, 2005; Throsby, 2010) and design is an attitude (Boland and Collopy, 2004) to envision the future.