Page 210 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

198 Design Meets Business
connect actors and contribute to innovation. Questions about what brokers actually do (Obstfeld et al. 2014), are mostly tackled in studies using a prac- tice-oriented approach. Hargadon and Sutton (1997) first broke ground in this direction by describing how brokers generate novel ideas by drawing existing technological solutions from some industries and reintroduce it in other industries where they might be potentially valuable. Building on this study, Lingo and O’Mahony (2010) did research on Nashville music producers in which they show that a key challenge for brokers is not only bringing together diverse parties, but keeping them together when novel ideas are brought to fruition.
So far, most studies explore brokerage behavior in a context where the outcome is known, for example the production of a music record (Lingo & O’Mahony 2010). We still know little about the role of brokers in situations where the outcome is unknown, or when they operate in highly abstract and fluid environments like exploratory projects targeted at generating creativity. Knowing more about brokerage behavior in such context is relevant since it is impossible for brokers to determine in advance what competences, capabilities and resources are needed to develop creative outcomes. This makes it even more difficult for brokers to connect diverse actors, and how this contributes to creativity. Hence, future research can look into question of how brokers connect diverse actors in exploratory creative projects.
This dissertation suggests possible answers to this question that can be further researched. On the one hand, in Chapter 4 it is suggested that crea- tives can enable connections through offering clients liminality. In doing so, creatives act as a sort of ‘decentralized catalysts’: they create potentia- lities for connections by involving themselves fluidly, rather than adop- ting a more static and continues position, in collaborations. These obser- vations respond to the recent attention for catalyst brokerage, showing that brokers may trigger creative change beyond their own direct control (Sgourev 2015). On the other hand, this dissertation suggests that crea- tives can also purposely keeping parties apart for purposes of generating creativity. In particular, in situations in which creatives see themselves as responsible for developing creative outcomes for clients (such as in the case of Fjord). For example, in Chapter 2 it is demonstrated that the designers purposefully maintain distance between their clients and the end-users, so that they can continue to present themselves as user experts, and hence gain legitimacy for their work.
Finally, this dissertation research also suggests that it is interesting to explore brokerage behavior beyond connected two rather disparate parties. In fact, especially in the case of Fjord, it is interesting to explore how