Page 217 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

5. Discussion 205
particular, in co-creation workshops like the ‘Ramble’, designers brought together clients, partners and employees of the client organization in new ways. Similarly, at Waag Society (Chapter 4), creatives also facilitated connections between their clients and other actors. In particular, they linked their clients to their own network of experts in the specific inno- vation context at hand. They achieved this not only through organizing co-creation workshops, but also through regularly hosting social drinks and organizing ‘open labs’ to welcome a larger audience.
Besides connecting to actors, in this dissertation research it is also suggested that creatives put efforts in connecting their clients to innova- tive technologies. As a sort of ‘technology brokers’ (Hargadon & Sutton 1997), they were always on the outlook for the latest technologies and tried to include these into their projects. In particular, each year Fjord globally releases a trend report in which the latest technologies are listed. In inter- views, diverse clients mentioned that this report was one of the reasons they approached Fjord and they expected Fjord to be aware of the latest tech- nologies. In projects, designers connected their clients to new technologies mainly through including new technologies in their design prototypes and presentations. For example, in Chapter 2 it is demonstrated how designers connected their clients to the new technology of ‘smart advisors’. While at Fjord the designers use innovative technologies in their work, at Waag Society they are also developing these innovative technologies themselves. Strongly inspired by the maker movement, in their innovation labs Waag Society’s creatives develop new technologies for example in the field of biohacking. Also, in their projects they introduce their clients to new tech- nologies by letting them play for example with 3D-printers and Arduino sensors (Chapter 4). Taken together, for creatives it appears important to have a broad network of actors and heightened awareness of innovative technologies, so that they can facilitate new connections between their clients, stakeholders and technologies. As designer John Maeda - who headed the MIT media lab and worked as president of the Rhode Island Design school - rightfully said, in the new context of their work designers can use their craftmanship not to make things work but to make relations work (in Glei & Bean 2014):
“When you make things with your hands, you force something into being. You sand it, you cut it, you fold it... You do everything to build it from end to end. Whereas leading requires a lot of talking, a lot of communicating — not using your hands. And when you’re a creative who makes things, you immediately build a distinction between the talkers and the makers. And makers tend to look down on talkers. And leaders are talkers. You