Abstract
For centuries, artists have refined techniques that produce novel and valuable
(though not necessarily in purely economic terms) outcomes, often in conditions
of material scarcity and severe deadline pressure (e.g., opening night). In this
talk, I'll provide a progress report on a study we've designed to discover the
"management principles" implicit in art practice and to determine their degree
of relevance to business practice. Our approach is inductive; we seek to build
from specific cases a general theory of the determinants of work process
structure and the relationship between process structure and management methods,
with special focus on methods that might be considered “artful.” We gather
several kinds of data but rely most heavily on semi-structured interviews with
expert innovators and observation of innovators at work. We document the
structure and context of innovation processes in a variety of art and business
settings, noting similarities and differences in order to isolate factors that
determine work process structure. We find that differences in process structure
imply differences in areas such as control, management of variation, and capture
of knowledge. Our objective is to develop a rigorous process theory of artful
innovation, with well-articulated contingencies that will provide nuanced
recommendations for management practice. One important theoretical argument that
emerges from this study suggests that recent use of IT to support innovative
business activities has led to work reorganization and other changes that make
artful processes, principles, and practices more relevant in business--thus that
"artful management" might become increasingly important. I'll also briefly
discuss an EC course, "Managing in the Creative Economy," being developed in
parallel with this study.