Page 21 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

1. Introduction 9
Creative products are goods with both symbolic and material value ( Jones et al. 2015). The first dimension, ‘symbolic’ suggests that it is difficult to determine its concrete value. The value of creative products is shaped by both how artists and audiences perceive it (Caves 2000; Lampel, Lant & Shamsie 2000). So, creative products are multi-interpretable and their value is ultimately subjectively derived. The second dimension, the ‘mate- rial’ base, “includes not only materials that give form to creative products, but also technologies and socio-technical systems that enable the produc- tion and consumption of creative products” ( Jones et al. 2015: 6). The mate- rial base might vary from ‘the body’ in the work of dancers, to ‘tools’ like instruments in the case of musicians, to ‘technologies’ like digital software. The material base of creative products shapes people’s judgements of whether the products are ‘originally’ made and how much efforts people put in the development of creative products. While most of us associate creative products with finished products, like a painting or a chair, this is not necessarily the case. Creative products might also be performances, such as a dance performance (Harrison & Rouse 2014), a movie (Bechky 2006a) or even services such as online user experiences (Fayard et al. 2017).
The creative industries grew in importance because of various develo- pments. To begin with, globally there has been a heightened demand for creative products (Svejenova, Mazza & Planellas 2007), driving fads and fashions in society (Simmel 1957). Further, the arrival of digital technolo- gies – products and services that are developed and implemented based on “new combinations of digital and physical components” (Yoo, Henfridsson, & Lyytinen 2010: 725) - heightened the popularity of the creative industries ( Jones et al. 2015). Digital technologies changed products, business models and mindsets, offering new opportunities for creatives. For example, now information can be spread online via signals and stored in ‘the cloud’. This gave creatives new platforms to promote themselves, for example on online platforms like Etsy, Airbnb Experiences or Netflix. Also, because of the arrival of digital technologies, creatives can develop new kinds of products and engage in new kinds of work. This, in turn, has led to the development of new creative occupations like Service Design (Fayard et al. 2017), tech- nology bloggers (Vaast & Safadi 2016) and influencers. The growth of the creative industries is also stimulated by public policy (Florida et al. 2015). In Western economies like the Netherlands, Sweden and Canada, the crea- tive industries are promoted as one of the most promising sectors for inno- vation and value creation ( Jones et al. 2015). In such countries, it is common to provide public subsidy for initiatives from the creative industries. While public policy efforts are different across the globe, there has been a general agenda to promote the creative industries and, especially, encourage its