Creativity, innovation and the cultural economy

This timely volume addresses a key debate around the cultural economy, notably the extent to which creativity and innovation can be considered as characteristic of the creative and cultural industries. This question has in recent years sparked an interest among academics and policy makers alike, and this book addresses itself to both these audiences. The aim of the book is to “examine the formulation, relationships between and practices of creativity and innovation in the cultural economy” (p. 5). In order to achieve this aim, the editors offer an introductory conceptual framework, arguing that creativity and innovation are better understood as processes, “emergent” in a structural context, rather than inputs and outputs of a production chain, and embodied in situated and embedded practice (pp. 6–7). The result is a Bourdieuian “field of creativity and innovation”, the contours of which are but summarily sketched in the introductory and concluding chapters. In terms of the structure, the editors have brought together 12 insightful chapters with paired case studies covering six industries: advertising, music, film industry, new media, design and the arts. In line with the introductory emphasis on variety as opposed to determined definitional paradigms, the chapters do not adhere to a strict brief, but rather constitute a diverse collection, offering a variety of methodological and empirical insights into the creative and cultural industries. The multi-disciplinarity of insights and variety of sectors covered were selected to highlight the diversity of sectors that fall under the “creative and cultural industries” banner. While the richness of insight into individual and organizational creative and innovative practices is of great credit to the book, the diversity of approaches fails at times to relate to the overall purpose and conceptual ambition of the book, particularly as a result of the divergence in the authors’ interpretations of creativity and innovation apparent in the pairing of case studies. The conclusions suggest a unifying interpretation, insofar as they invite us to understand creativity and innovation in their relation to processes of “mediating, filtering and valuing knowledge in a timely and effective way” (p. 271), which is helpful in enabling a comparison across the different fields of expertise presented. According to Chris Bilton’s study of advertising, this industry has experienced a shift in recent decades from creative specialization focused on copywriting and art direction, to media planning and strategy, highlighting an increasing overlap between “creative” and “managerial” functions, which may be typical of the creative industries more widely. Pratt and Gornostaeva’s chapter explores the governance of innovation in the film and television industry, emphasizing the complex inter-relationships in networks of firms, articulated around technology, regulation, organization and location. The authors call for an understanding of production as a process that re-articulates itself in relation to these four elements. Referring to the music industry, Hesmondhalgh also calls for a comprehensive analysis of dynamics of change. Although technological innovations have indeed revolutionized the music industry, they cannot be understood as