Page 23 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

1. Introduction 11
Bechky 2006) or a city (Florida 2002). In such settings, people can sense the freedom to interact with each other; to break with routines; to express opinions; and to engage in all behaviors that might seem abnormal or even ‘crazy’ in other contexts. All such behaviors can contribute to the genera- tion of creativity. Finally, not all companies have the motivation to pursue creative endeavors. Because managing creativity can be a challenging and tiresome endeavor with an unclear purpose and value (Lingo & O’Mahony 2010; Townley, Beech & McKinlay 2009; Gotsi et al. 2010), it might not be prioritized in the workplace (Amabile 1997). Taken together, the gap between an organization’s desire to be creative and its ability to be creative is often larger than expected.
The difficulties that businesses experience in triggering creativity by themselves, generates opportunities for creatives. Creatives are comfor- table in ambiguous realms (Lingo & O’Mahony 2010; Sgourev 2013), have the skills to transform intangible ideas into something tangible (Stigliani & Ravasi 2012; Chapter 2), and are accustomed to think out of the box and identify new opportunities (Boland & Collopy 2004). They can help orga- nizations to create the right setting and mindset to pursue novel directions. So, creatives have an overall attitude (Michlewski 2016), culture (Elsbach & Stigliani 2018) and practices (Fayard et al. 2017) that can be complemen- tary to business, and help firms to kickstart creativity.
Collaborations between creatives and business professionals can take many forms. Collaborations can take place in terms of fixed employment (Catmull 2008; Obstfeld 2012), for example through building a creative department, or through temporary collaborations, or through projects with creative firms (Hargadon & Bechky 2006). In both cases, organiza- tions can either outsource creativity to creatives or ask creatives to teach organizational members the right skills and mindset to pursue creativity individually, or a combination of both (see Chapter 4). The studies in my dissertation are done in the context of temporary projects between crea- tives and businesses.
In helping business to trigger creativity, creatives in a way take the role of ‘jesters’. Originating in the 19th century, jesters are people who worked at the court and were “not only appreciated for [their] entertainment, but also for [their]... political and critical look on things. (...) [using their] job to criticize and challenge [their] contemporaries through satire” (Michlewski 2016: X). In a way, then jesters are at the same time insiders and outsiders to the court. Through performances and short dialogues, jesters confront the members of the court with ‘the status quo’. Jesters can either downplay or explicate problems so that people can speak about these more openly. They can achieve this through asking provocative questions that people