Call for papers

Situated Creativity in the Cultural Industries

How are spatial and/or cognitive proximities created in various situations, from the individual sphere to meta-level institutions, and how do these situations enable creativity?

Journal of Industry and Innovation

Special Issue of
Industry and Innovation with guest editors:

Fiorenza Belussi,Padua University fiorenza.belussi@unipd.it

Silvia Rita Sedita,
Padua University silvia.sedita@unipd.it

Call for papers

The cultural industries are of increasing economic importance, and the study of them has expanded from focusing on the high arts of West European cultures to also encompassing global popular media and art (such as comics, animation, computer games and multimedia, film and video, and so on). This special issue of
Industry and Innovation aims to bring together a series of contributions that are exploring the relatively new topic of the management of innovation processes in cultural industries by focusing upon one of their micro–foundations: Creativity.

The special issue departs from the traditional “myth of the individual genius” and instead focuses upon
situated creativity. At a general level, creators are situated in both historical and social contexts. Hence, their creativity is bounded by particular cognitive categories as well as social recognition of the novelty they create. More specifically, creators are often situated in various organizational and institutional contexts that may enable and constrain creativity in different ways. Examples of such situations include connected and disconnected social networks, clusters, inter-firm projects, and various communities -offline as well as online. In such situations, creativity may be enabled by, for example, cognitive and spatial proximities.

The special issue invites contributions that analyze how spatial and/or cognitive proximities are created in various situations, from the individual sphere to meta-level institutions, and how these situations facilitate creativity. The starting point for addressing these problems was the international conference “Networks of creativity in science and arts” held at the University of Padua on the 21st-22nd May 2007.

Possible topics

The Guest Editors invite both empirical and theoretical submissions from various perspectives and methodologies. Possible topics include but are not limited to the following:

(1)
Creative performance. How can we measure creativity? Are there any economic performance indicators - quantitative or qualitative - capable of estimating creativity in the cultural industries?

(2)
Spatial proximity. Does spatial proximity facilitate creative processes and how? Which relationship is there between a creative output and specific places where it was developed? Can we say anything general about the role of place-bound institutions (such as vocational and higher education) in the cultural industries?

(3)
Social networks. Are particular network structures more conductive to creativity? What is the role of core and periphery members? How do networks of creativity arise and evolve over time? What is the relation - if any - between such networks and spatial proximity and place?

(4)
Communities. What are the conditions under which a community is more likely to produce a creative output? What role do the level and distribution of capabilities of its members play? What are the motivational factors for participating to the creative processor - or excluding/including others from participation?

(5)
Organizational forms. At the firm level, what organizational forms are associated with creativity in the cultural industries? How do project teams emerge? What happens to the experiences and capabilities of these teams after projects have been completed? What is the relationship between individual projects and their project networks with large established media organizations, such as studios, music distributors, and public broadcasters?

Note that while
Industry and Innovation publishes high-quality empirical papers, they should not primarily be descriptive. Rather, they should explicitly contribute to a theoretical agenda, and preferably be based on novel and exclusive data.

Submission Process

To be considered for publication, manuscripts of a maximum of 10,000 words must be sent electronically to the Guest Editors by
February 28, 2008. Please submit manuscripts as e-mail attachments to the Guest Editors ( fiorenza.belussi@unipd.it and silvia.sedita@unipd.it). All papers will receive a double-blind review following
Industry and Innovation’s normal review process.

For more information, see www.industryandinnovation.org .