Chris Bilton

Handbook of Management and Creativity

This Handbook draws on current research and case studies to consider how managers can become more creative across four aspects of their business: innovation, entrepreneurship, leadership and organisation – and does so in an accessible, engaging and user-friendly format.

Uncreativity: the shadow side of creativity

This paper argues that our fascination with creativity is distracting and potentially destructive, resulting in a tendency to discard projects and people before they achieve their potential. ‘Uncreativity’ is used to recognise the importance of continuity over change, the contribution of intermediaries and administrators to creative processes and the possibility of reconfiguring and refining existing ideas rather than inventing new ones. The paper argues that the ‘discourse’ of creativity prioritises novelty over value. This leads to an unsustainable emphasis on new ideas and initiatives in organisations. For individuals, it encourages an overemphasis on individual talent and relentless self-belief. This partial understanding of creative processes results in unrealistic expectations and self-destructive and self-exploiting behaviours. Uncreativity is proposed as a necessary element in creative processes for both organisations and individuals. Cultural policy and cultural management need to acknowledge the important contribution of these uncreative elements as well as simply endorsing ‘creativity’.

Jane Addams, pragmatism and cultural policy

This article examines the American social reformer Jane Addams (1860–1935), not so much as an intellectual in her own right, but rather as somebody who embodied certain contradictions regarding the cultural idealism of the intellectual class in the late nineteenth century. Addams’ principal achievement was to co‐found a “settlement house” in Chicago in 1889. Settlement houses were residential communities established by universities among the urban poor, where idealistic young graduates would engage their neighbours in improving cultural and educational activities. Like other nineteenth‐century institutions such as museums and libraries, settlement houses represented a middle‐class attempt at cultural outreach and democratization. Addams analyzed the motives for establishing such an institution and the cultural contradictions it embodied. Her habitual self‐doubt steered her towards a pragmatic multiculturalism at odds with her contemporaries, and eventually towards an emphasis on art and education as catalysts for cultural diversity. Addams was responsible for transforming the settlement house from an instrument of cultural reform into a prototype community offering a public sphere based on tolerance and diversity. Her autobiography reveals the guilt, self‐disgust and doubt which lie behind nineteenth‐century cultural idealism and twentieth‐century cultural democratization.

Promoting ensemble : creative leadership in practice at the Royal Shakespeare Company

‘In many organisations creativity is so often seen as the preserve of a small number of people with “artistic temperaments” but in my experience all sorts of people have creative abilities which can be used to the benefit of a “creative” organisation. The task of a manager is to find ways of exploiting this. This Handbook provides the reader with insights to help them and others to promote the kind of creativity that adds real value.’ – Greg Dyke, Chair, British Film Institute; Chair, Football Association; Chancellor, University of York, UK and Director-General of the BBC 2000–2004

A creative industries perspective on creativity and culture

The chapter considers changing definitions of creativity in relation to UK cultural policy and practice in the creative industries. Three perspectives are introduced, beginning with the notion of creativity as a product of individual creativity and talent, popularised by the UK government’s 1998 Creative Industries Mapping Document. This perspective is contrasted with an older model of creativity as a collective expression of shared values, as emphasised in earlier cultural industries policies of the 1970s and 1980s. Finally, the chapter considers contemporary views of creativity in the creative industries as participatory, user-generated, remixed and ‘democratized’. The chapter concludes that there is value in all three perspectives—the challenge for policy makers, managers and practitioners in the creative industries is connecting together individual self-expression with collective cultural values.

A framework for creative management and managing creativity in

‘In many organisations creativity is so often seen as the preserve of a small number of people with “artistic temperaments” but in my experience all sorts of people have creative abilities which can be used to the benefit of a “creative” organisation. The task of a manager is to find ways of exploiting this. This Handbook provides the reader with insights to help them and others to promote the kind of creativity that adds real value.’ – Greg Dyke, Chair, British Film Institute; Chair, Football Association; Chancellor, University of York, UK and Director-General of the BBC 2000–2004

Valuable Creativity: Rediscovering Purpose

The chapter argues that a pursuit of innovation and change can result in destructive outcomes for organizations and individuals and an unsustainable model of creativity. As an alternative to this “dark side of creativity”, the chapter advocates a more balanced approach, in which creativity must be measured against the twin criteria of novelty and value or fitness for purpose. These two dimensions form a “creativity continuum” for creative products, processes and people, requiring them to balance two opposing sets of criteria. Western culture has tended to pursue novelty without paying sufficient attention to the value of novel ideas. The chapter considers alternatives to this imbalanced approach to creativity, starting with jugaad, an Indian model of creativity based on an adaptive reworking of locally available resources rather than initiating creative ideas from above. This approach is defined as “value-based innovation” and related to “lean” and “agile” management techniques and to Crawford’s theory of “thinking as doing” and “communities of use” (Crawford, The case for working with your hands: Or why office work is bad and fixing things feels good, Viking, 2009). Finally, the chapter considers implications of this more holistic, value-based approach to creativity for education, localization and sustainability.

Creative management in practice: bisociation with 'timely balance'

‘In many organisations creativity is so often seen as the preserve of a small number of people with “artistic temperaments” but in my experience all sorts of people have creative abilities which can be used to the benefit of a “creative” organisation. The task of a manager is to find ways of exploiting this. This Handbook provides the reader with insights to help them and others to promote the kind of creativity that adds real value.’ – Greg Dyke, Chair, British Film Institute; Chair, Football Association; Chancellor, University of York, UK and Director-General of the BBC 2000–2004

Introduction to Part I: Creative Innovation

Jackson’s words reflect the bisociations that we outlined in our introductory chapter: a tight diligence and focus on the plan, combined with a loose dilettantism that continues to seek new influences; a singular leader’s vision, while interacting with and including others in developments; a tightly controlled organisation that at the same time unleashes creative talent. But, mostly, they reflect that eye for innovation with a tight focus on making sure that a product gets created with the open mind that allows for further discovery. For example, Jackson is well known for his intense logistical planning and attention to detail in advance of shooting, but as he noted (KiaOra 2012: 27): ‘There always has to be spontaneity. You have to be thinking in a flexible way . . . you have to be flexible and craft what you’ve got.’ Even during the shoot things can be changed if one is mindful of the possibilities. According to Jackson (KiaOra 2012: 27): ‘You can’t have an idea that requires a character that hasn’t been brought to the set or a particular prop or location that’s not in front of you. But so long as

Managing creativity: exploring the paradox

Creativity is everywhere and nowhere. Like “culture” or “community”, it’s one of those words that has been devalued through over-use. One of the areas where “creativity” still has currency is in business. Whereas humanities academics are increasingly sceptical towards the rhetoric of creativity, in management studies and in business schools, creativity remains an alluring prospect. In this collection the editors draw together perspectives on creativity from a variety of disciplines (including practising artists) and apply them to management. The core of their argument is that “creativity” and “management” work in parallel, not in opposition. But the relationship between them remains difficult, and this is the paradox they set out to explain. The book is organized around Richard Caves’ (2002) list of properties of the creative industries: the “inherent unknowability” of the creative process, the irrational motives of creative practitioners (“art for art’s sake”), the “infinite variety” of formats and audience responses to creative output, the variety of skills and talents converging in creative work (“motley crew” property) and the long-term value of the creative product (“ars longa”). Each of these five sections consists of three papers, framed by a brief editorial commentary and literature review, which expand upon Caves’ analytical categories. It should be a fascinating exercise. Many of the articles are striking and insightful on the creative process, particularly some of those written from the practical perspective of designers or composers. But too many of the academic contributors are content to refer inwards to the hermeneutics of cultural studies and aesthetics rather than outwards to the “paradox” of managing creativity. Some are too quick to dismiss “managerial” approaches, described variously as “anodyne” or “user-manual like”. In fact, as Chris Warhurst reminds us in his useful contribution to this volume, management academics are not necessarily blind to complexity and humanists should not always assume the intellectual high ground. There is value in applying an inter-disciplinary perspective to the business of managing creativity. And humanities scholars can certainly contribute fresh insights to the internal logic of management studies. But the interlocutors must be prepared to meet the subject matter halfway. Some of the articles in this book are effective enough on their own terms, as essays in cultural studies, communication or aesthetics (and the management paradigm is capable of projecting some interesting analogies or paradoxes into these respective fields of enquiry). But too many of the authors don’t have much to say about (or even much interest in) management. Not surprisingly then, the different disciplines don’t share a common purpose or language and what might have been an interesting colloquium doesn’t quite work as a coherent collection. Managing Creativity began life as a series of seminars under the theme of “The Discipline of Creativity: Exploring the Paradox”, supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council among others. One suspects that the collection might have worked better in this format, with