Misfits, Mavericks and Mainstreams: Drivers of Innovation in Creative Industries

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: