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Creative mediators and their role in the governance of creative clusters
... For instance, their voluntary and associative nature together with their cost-effective structure facilitates the development of efficient collaborative solutions (Berkowitz, Crowder, and Brooks 2020). Meta-organizations also tend to foster deliberate, grassroots-driven, consensus-driven changes within industries (Berkowitz 2018;Dotti and Lupova-Henry 2020). Meta-organizations are inclined to cultivate soft laws or standards that facilitate self-regulation across an industry (Berkowitz and Souchaud 2019;Megali 2022). ...
How do we change social orders to deliver a sustainable future? A growing literature in organization studies argues that meta-organizations are part of the answer. Meta-organizations have been shown to be well equipped for tackling grand challenges, yet paradoxically they also tend to resist change due to their inertia. In this paper, we move beyond the question of whether and how meta-organizations act as vectors of transition to address the question of how some of the defining organizational attributes of meta-organizations – which we call ‘meta-organizationality’ – create tensions for sustainability transitions. We argue that these tensions result from frictions between the imperatives of transitions, i.e. conditions for achieving broad socio-technical transformations for sustainability, and the imperatives of meta-organizations, i.e. the implications resulting specifically from their meta-organizationality. We unpack four tensions, which we frame as ‘multi-referentiality–directionality’, ‘layering–diffusion’, ‘dialectical actorhood–coordination’, and ‘multi-level decidedness–reflexivity’. We argue that transformative meta-organizations are those that successfully navigate these tensions to produce sociotechnical system changes. This work has several implications for organization studies, meta-organization studies and transition studies, and offers several avenues for research.
... Porter 1990;Markusen 1996;Paniccia 1998). The studies adopting this perspective have been analysing cluster development through the prism of evolutionary processes of variation, selection and retention where the 'cluster management' role is inexistent (Astley and Van de Ven 1983;Giuliani 2010;Dotti and Lupova-Henry 2020). ...
In this paper, we aim at exploring whether and how ‘organised’ clusters can be conceived of as deliberate actors within their contexts. Seeing such clusters as meta-organisations, we suggest that these can make ‘organisationality’ design choices, or decisions regarding full or partial implementation of the five elements constitutive of formal organisations: membership, hierarchy, rules, monitoring, and sanctions. To explore the relationship between clusters’ organisationality and actorhood, we conduct two qualitative case studies of organised clusters in Australia. Our findings suggest that clusters can deliberately ‘construct’ themselves both as organisations and social actors. Furthermore, drawing upon the institutional work perspective, we propose that clusters can engage in deliberate identity, boundary, and practice work. However, in doing so, they address both internal and external legitimating audiences. Finally, our findings suggest that clusters’ organisationality design choices may influence the locus of their actorhood resulting in more or less collaborative approaches to institutional work.
This chapter explores the growth and characteristics of Bristol’s screen industries, which consist principally of television production companies and a much smaller group engaged in feature film production. In contrast to what one could call ‘engineered’ screen production centres such as Cardiff or Greater Manchester (MediaCityUK in Salford), Bristol’s screen industries—notably the BBC’s Natural History Unit and Aardman Animations—have grown incrementally through the entrepreneurial energies of local creative personnel, rather than from major capital investment, either from the national government or regional agencies. The nature of this evolution has enabled Bristol’s 189 independent production companies—which co-operate as well as compete—to be highly adaptable, responding to local conditions, technological change and shifts in international markets. They also reflect the city’s long anti-authoritarian history, a place where ‘alternative’ ideas are encouraged and supported. Situated within an overarching discussion of the conceptual shift from ‘creative clusters’ to ‘creative ecosystems’ and the importance of understanding a range of causal factors rather than simply economic drivers, the chapter’s detailed exploration of Bristol’s screen industries is based on more than 80 interviews with company CEOs, BBC and Channel 4 executives and with cultural intermediaries as well as local authority figures and creatives alongside extensive data gathering and on-the-ground empirical research that informed two co-authored reports: Go West! Bristol’s Film and Television Industries (2017) and Go West! 2 (2022). It emphasises the importance of how the city’s screen ecosystems are curated and managed and the significance of its successful bids to become a UNESCO City of Film in 2017 and to host one of Channel 4’s Creative Hubs in 2019. The account concludes by positioning Bristol’s screen ecosystem within broader spatial, social and political contexts and reflects on its sustainability within an increasing volatile and competitive global media marketplace.KeywordsCreative clusterCreative ecosystemCreative labourCultural intermediariesPublic service broadcastersSustainability
This book provides theories, experiences, reflections and future directions for social scientists who wish to engage with policy-oriented research in cities and regions. The ‘policy learning’ perspective is comprehensively discussed, focusing on actors promoting ‘policy knowledge’ and interaction among different stakeholders. The book also aims to provide practical insights for policy-makers and practitioners interested in research-based approaches to cities and regions.
Policy learning is an attractive proposition, but who learns and for what purposes? Can we learn the wrong lesson? And why do so many attempts to learn what works often fail? In this article, we provide three lessons. First, there are four different modes in which constellations of actors learn. Hence our propositions about learning are conditional on which of the four contexts we refer to. Second, policy learning does not just happen; there are specific hindrances and triggers. Thus, learning can be facilitated by knowing the mechanisms to activate and the likely obstacles. Third, learning itself is a conditional final aim: although the official aspiration of public organisations and politicians is to improve on public policy, policy learning can also be dysfunctional - for an organisation, a policy, a constellation of actors or even democracy.
Epistemic communities are at their most powerful in novel and technically complex policy issues when decision-makers’ and stakeholders’ understandings are rudimentary. A successful epistemic community reduces uncertainty through policy learning. These lessons enable policy actors to recognize their preferences thus making such issues more tractable. However, policy learning is dynamic and has various modes. Where an epistemic community’s advice points in unfavourable policy directions, rival lessons may be crafted by policy actors thus threatening an epistemic community’s place as principal teacher on an issue. What happens to the influence of epistemic communities that do not attend to these alternative interpretations? Can epistemic communities teach in the ‘wrong’ mode? Using the empirical case of the long-running hormone growth promoters saga in the European Union (EU) we show how, even in complex technical issues, learning in the epistemic mode may not dominate for long. Specifically, we identify a key barrier to epistemic communities’ influence neglected in the literature: the ‘irony of epistemic learning’. In setting the foundational knowledge on novel issues, epistemic communities provide non-specialist governance actors with the resources to oppose the very knowledge these experts have created thereby curtailing their influence. We conclude with a discussion about whether epistemic communities can and should overcome this irony.
In recent years, the UK government and policymakers have sought to maximise the impact of the creative economy via a programme of targeted intervention. Intermediary agencies - those organisations that sit between government and policymakers on one hand, and creative practitioners and microbusinesses on the other - are increasingly seen as crucial to the functioning of the creative economy. This article reports on the activities of one creative intermediary - Cultural Enterprise Office - based in Glasgow, Scotland. CEO's remit is to help creatives become more 'businesslike', and they provide or facilitate access to training and skills development. The article draws on interviews conducted with CEO staff and clients, and ethnographic material gathered from observation of CEO's working practices. I explore how creatives narrativise their personal and professional development in relation to intermediaries, and demonstrate the tension at the core of CEO's practice - between their remit to support a skills and employability agenda and their understanding of the limitations of this agenda. I also explore the emotional component of business support, which arises in response to the extreme individualisation associated with creative work, and the precarious working conditions that creatives face. The rationale for writing this article stems from the fact that the creative economy is now a globalised concept, with many countries looking to the UK for guidance on growing the sector. Yet little is known about what services creatives draw down from intermediaries, why and when, or how they understand the role of intermediaries.
Is the clustering of audio-visual companies in London’s Soho really the same as the clustering of Berlin’s new media industry? The media cluster approach has gained a lot of attention not only in academia, but also in political discourse. But, as appealing as the media cluster concept is, one of the most fundamental issues is the comparability of the phenomenon. This article tackles this issue and an analysis of 43 case studies has been conducted. The case studies have been grouped to find a new typology for media clusters. The research revealed six different types: The Creative Region, the Giant Anchor, the Specialized Area, the Attracting Enabler, the Real Estate and the Pooling Initiative. The typologies showed that they distinguish especially in their geographical scale and specialization in media activities, while at the same time cluster types can be found in the same area. They are driven by four rationales: agglomeration, urbanization, localization economies and artificial formation.
This paper looks at the interplay between ‘creative industries’ and ‘cultural policy’ in France. We analyse how university stakeholder communities in the field of elite vocational training schools for ‘applied arts’ such as Bande dessinée (comics and animation) and videogaming negotiate the over simplistically reified relationship between public policies in the arts and the creative sector. The analysis relates the ‘case-studies’ of the ENJMIN (a national videogames school in Angoulême) to the long-standing French technocratic traditions of creating elite graduate schools in all fields of public policy, and, increasingly, in the creative sector. The study assesses the tension between the speed of response of policy in a rapidly changing economic environment and the creation of institutions that are supportive and respective and can deliver in a sustainable and substantial way. The paper explores how French policy manages the conflict between complex HE institutions involving loosely coupled communities with varying degrees of mutual commitment and self-identification and the creative industries as a complex, politically charged, and often emotionally laden field.
The term 'cultural intermediaries' is good to think with. It has been a productive device for examining the producers of symbolic value in various industries, commodity chains and urban spaces, highlighting such issues as the blurring of work and leisure, the conservatism of 'new' and 'creative' work, and the material practices involved in the promotion of consumption (e.g.
The contributors investigate policy paradigms and their ability to explain the policy process – actors, ideas, discourses and strategies employed – to provide readers with a better understanding of public policy and its dynamics. Drawing together leading researchers in the field, this edited collection offers a unique insight into a selection of policy paradigms, investigating their significance for public policy, policy making and policy change, in both theory and practice. The contributions open up new avenues of research on policy dynamics while re-evaluating the accuracy and effectiveness of existing policy orthodoxy
The Triple-Helix model of knowledge-industry-government relationships is one of the most comprehensive attempts to explain the changing institutional frameworks for innovation and growth, especially in the regional and urban contexts. Since the 1970s policies have been developed across Europe to evolve this institutional landscape. Since the late 1990s, regional and urban development strategies have also sought to harness the growth potential of the cultural and creative industries to regional and urban economic development. However, whilst the regional and urban planning literature has examined the growth-promoting potential of universities very closely, their possible role in relation to regional and urban creative economic development has received less attention. This paper aims to begin addressing this gap by interrogating the relationship between universities and the regional creative economy using, as a starting point, a model of analysis suggested by the Triple-Helix theoretical framework. The paper finds that whilst universities possess often long and hidden associations with regional and urban creative activities-as hidden protagonists-there are important institutional and professional challenges in the possibility of their developing an explicit and sustainable role as new actors in the regional and urban creative economies. The paper identifies the nature of these challenges with a view to developing a clearer understanding of the system, policy and institutional realities that underpin the often complex dynamics of knowledge creation-practice relationships found in arts and humanities disciplines.
Noncompliance is most often understood in the public policy literature as a problem of implementation and enforcement. Yet, this perhaps normative focus misses the role of noncompliance as a source of policy change. To demonstrate this unexplored role, this study conceptualizes noncompliance and subsequent governmental responses as an interactive, ongoing process, in which noncompliance may gain social acceptance and governmental reaction changes over time. Manifestations of noncompliance in health (immunization refusal, needle exchange programs), education (homeschooling), policing (community police), drug use (decriminalization of marijuana) and urban services (community gardening) suggest that governmental reaction is a dynamic, developing process, constituting a series of responses influenced by social acceptance of noncompliance and by the latter’s implications. Each response may take on one of four patterns of legitimization: embracement (legitimization), adaptation (reluctant legitimization), acceptance (implicit legitimization) and stricter enforcement (delegitimization). A more nuanced portrayal of the interaction between noncompliance and governmental reaction emphasizes a reciprocal relationship between policy makers and policy targets.
O'Connor J. Intermediaries and imaginaries in the cultural and creative industries, Regional Studies. This paper conducts an historical and conceptual review of the idea of 'cultural intermediaries' and sets up a contrast between the cultural and creative industries. It draws on theorizations of 'economic imaginaries' and reconstructs the respective imaginaries of cultural and creative industries. It suggests that the former was organized around the culturalization of the economy and the second around the economization of culture. Nevertheless, there are complicities between them, not least in the contention that a new set of economic developments would redeem the traditional promises of culture.
Cluster initiatives are either initiated top down by public administrations or bottom up by private firms to strengthen cooperation of regional firms and institutions. We compare the governance regimes of top-down and bottom-up cluster initiatives by using a classic principal-agent framework comprising task setting, assignment of decision rights, performance evaluation, and incentive system. We use the Cavarian cluster initiative, a top-down initiative, as a reference point and compare it with the governance regimes of German and Austrian bottom-up clusters. We show that differences in task setting and other elements of the principal-agent framework can lower the effectiveness of top-down clusters.
Prior research on project-based organizing in creative industries has emphasized the importance of regionally embedded institutions, creative networks and intermediaries in the development of regional project ecologies. Recently, film and television production in the United States has expanded beyond traditional clusters in Hollywood and New York to new locations in the United States, Canada and overseas, raising important questions about the dynamics of increasingly mobile creative project networks. Using data on the Massachusetts film and television industry between 1998 and 2010, we argue that regional film offices play an increasingly important role as network intermediaries in connecting mobile creative professionals and project entrepreneurs from outside a cluster with labor pools, service providers, and production locations inside a cluster on a project-by-project basis.
This essay proposes a cognitive-evolutionaryapproach to economic policy making where the entire process ofpolicy-formation and implementation is analyzed as a collectiveprocess of mobilization and problem-solving that extends fromthe individual level over the level of collective decision makingto the constitutional level. In the procedural view proposed,many issues or problems of economic policy are not fully solvedbecause of four main filters or barriers that filter out certainissues while letting others through. The main task for politicalentrepreneurs is to surmount these barriers. Important aspectsof the politico-economic process are cognitive processes of perceptionand interpretation by the individual; processes of interpretation,mobilization, and negotiation at the collective level; and evolutionarydynamics at the constitutional level.—This interdisciplinaryoriented approach provides a framework that suggests new categoriesfor analyzing policy-making in a systematic way by linking thebehavior and thinking of the individual with the ongoing politicalprocess at the collective and constitutional level, and leadsto conclusions for advising politicians.
In the last decade there has been an increased interest in the cluster approach as a tool for boosting regional competitiveness. In this article practices and processes of regional cluster building in Sweden are examined in order to better understand the key traits that seem to be common to successful regional cluster initiatives. It is argued that regional cluster building may be formed through long running policy processes that are crucially constituted by public and private actors' collective vision of what cluster policy involves and what a cluster can look like. Results from a study of 13 cluster initiatives in Sweden are presented. Out of these, four key examples are presented in detail to illustrate four distinct 'models' of cluster approaches that emerged: (a) industry-led initiatives to build competitiveness and competence within an existing base; (b) top-down public policy exercises in brand-building; (c) visionary projects to produce an industry cluster from 'thin air'; (d) small scale, geographically dispersed, natural resource based, temporal clusters that link or dip into global rather than national systems, sources of innovation and competitive advantage. The article closes with the presentation of a checklist of some common elements that successful cluster initiatives in Sweden have shared. It is hoped that they may trigger further research or be useful to policy-makers working in the area. It is concluded that though many questions and problems persist over the use of the cluster-approach it can be a useful tool for regional development.
Hracs B. J. Cultural intermediaries in the digital age: the case of independent musicians and managers in Toronto, Regional Studies. This paper explores the limitations of the contemporary do-it-yourself model of music production and the recent shift towards re-specialization in Toronto in Ontario, Canada. It argues that freelance managers are re-emerging as key intermediaries who catalyse and facilitate new organizational forms and strategic partnerships between creative workers. Attention is paid to how digital technologies and shifting market dynamics influence and alter the relationships and contracts between these individuals. The spatial concentration of managers and other ‘helpers’, including fashion designers, photographers and web designers, is also used to explain why music production remains clustered in space despite the decentralizing potential of digital technologies.
Hracs B. J. 数码时代的文化中介者：多伦多独立音乐人与经济人的案例研究，区域研究。本文探讨当代的独立制作音乐生产模式所面临的局限，以及最近在加拿大安大略省多伦多中转向再专业化的趋势。本文主张，独立经济人的再度兴起，是催化并促进创意工作者之间新的组织形式与策略性伙伴关系的关键。本研究关注数码科技与转变中的市场动态如何影响并改变这些行动者之间的关系与契约。经济人和其他如时尚设计师、摄影师与网页设计师等“协助者”的空间聚集，亦用来解释为何仅管数码科技有着去中心化的潜能，音乐生产仍持续保有着空间集群。
Hracs B. J. Les intermédiaires culturels à l'ère numérique: le cas des musiciens et des managers indépendants à Toronto, Regional Studies. Cet article cherche à examiner les limites du modèle contemporain de la production de musique que l'on peut construire soi-même et la tendance récente à la respécialisation à Toronto en Ontario, au Canada. On affirme que les managers indépendants apparaissent à nouveau comme intermédiaires clé qui stimulent et facilitent des types d'organisation et des partenariats stratégiques nouveaux entre les travailleurs créatifs. On prête une attention particulière à comment les technologies numériques et la dynamique de la fluctuation du marché influent sur et modifient les rapports et les contrats entre ces individus. La concentration géographique des managers et des autres ‘animateurs’, y compris les créateurs de mode, les photographes et les concepteurs web, sert aussi à expliquer pourquoi la production de musique reste regroupée dans l'espace en dépit de la décentralisation éventuelle des technologies numériques.
Hracs B. J. Kulturelle Vermittler im Digitalzeitalter: der Fall der unabhängigen Musiker und Manager in Toronto, Regional Studies. In diesem Beitrag werden die Grenzen des modernen ,,Do-it-yourself”-Modells der Musikproduktion und die aktuelle Tendenz hin zur Neuspezialisierung in Toronto (Ontario, Kanada) untersucht. Es wird argumentiert, dass freiberufliche Manager erneut eine Rolle als zentrale Vermittler spielen, die neue Organisationsformen und strategische Partnerschaften zwischen Vertretern kreativer Berufe katalysieren und bereitstellen. Besondere Beachtung findet die Frage, wie die Beziehungen und Verträge zwischen diesen Personen von der Digitaltechnik und der veränderlichen Marktdynamik beeinflusst und verändert werden. Die räumliche Konzentration von Managern und weiteren ‘Helfern’, wie z. B. Modedesignern, Fotografen und Webdesignern, dient auch zur Erklärung der Frage, warum die Musikproduktion trotz des dezentralisierenden Potenzials der Digitaltechnik weiterhin in räumlichen Clustern angeordnet ist.
Hracs B. J. Intermediarios culturales en la edad digital: el caso de los músicos y gerentes independientes en Toronto, Regional Studies. En este artículo se analizan las limitaciones del modelo actual ‘Hágalo Usted Mismo’ de producción de música y la actual tendencia hacia la re-especialización en Toronto, Ontario, Canadá. Se argumenta que los gerentes autónomos están resurgiendo como intermediarios clave que catalizan y facilitan nuevas formas de organización y colaboraciones estratégicas entre trabajadores creativos. Se presta atención al modo en que las tecnologías digitales y las nuevas dinámicas de mercado influyen y alteran las relaciones y los contratos entre estas personas. La concentración espacial de los gerentes y otros ‘ayudantes’, incluyendo los diseñadores de moda, fotógrafos y diseñadores de páginas web, también sirve para explicar por qué la producción musical sigue agrupada en el espacio pese al potencial de descentralización ofrecido por las tecnologías digitales.
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This paper explores the status of advertising practitioners as cultural intermediaries and uses that analysis to think through the contested relationship between consumption and production, and culture and economy. Using examples and illustrations from interview data with advertising practitioners in the UK, I explore how the circulation of rhetoric in the advertising industry functions as one form of mediation performed by advertising practitioners. I argue that practitioners’ role should not be understood solely in terms of a mediation between producer and consumer; instead, their role should be conceived in terms of a negotiation between multiple “regimes of mediation”, including that of the relationship between advertising agencies and their clients. Agencies perform commercial relationships, bringing them into being and constantly redefining them. Attending to these multiple modes of mediation opens up questions about the status of advertising, the role of cultural intermediaries, and the relationship between production and consumption, economy and culture.
Fostering innovation to achieve the goals of sustainable development agenda has been the aim of a growing number of governance strategies implemented by both public and private sector actors. Traditionally, the question of who is best fit to govern has been addressed through the hierarchy-market-network trichotomy, however, such an approach might be simplifying the ways actors interact in the process of governing sustainable innovation. This article aims to move beyond this debate by systematically reviewing the scientific literature on governance strategies fostering sustainable innovation and focusing on three key dimensions: the primary actor (the ‘who’), their approach to governance (the ‘how’) and conceptualisations of sustainable innovation (the ‘what’). Based on this ‘who-how-what’ framework, our analysis shows the shift towards more collaborative governance strategies and highlights the need to focus on the ‘how’ rather than debating over the ‘who’. Finally, we propose promising fields for future research.
The construction of a large metropolitan infrastructure, like other megaprojects, requires advanced technical expertise, capacity to manage complex procedures and planning processes as well as capacity to deal with conflicting interests. For the case of megaprojects, overestimation of benefits and underestimation of costs and risks is a common problem all over the world, leading to the ‘survival of the unfittest’ (Flyvbjerg, 2009). The main causes were identified in the optimism bias, strategic misrepresentation, path dependency leading to lock-in and poor oversight; however, the ‘survival’ of these causes is still unclear. For this purpose, the survival of the unfittest megaprojects is re-conceptualised into a proper cognitive-evolutionary framework. By introducing an innovative taxonomy of policy knowledge, this paper aims to argue that a specific policy community can ‘survive’ by strategically using a ‘cognitive monopoly’ of some of the relevant policy knowledge for megaprojects.
Based on the case of the new ‘Watermael – Schuman – Josaphat’ rail junction in Brussels, findings show the critical role played by the Federal Ministry for Communications thanks to a long-standing and context-specific know-how on underground works. While missing knowledge was outsourced and instrumentally used to overcome potential lock-in, the Ministry was able to build the only new large metropolitan infrastructure of Belgium during a period of high uncertainty due to decentralisation. The paper concludes discussing the effects of preserving this policy knowledge as well as negative issues related to this ‘cognitive monopoly’.
Knowledge brokers have emerged as a new type of actors shaping scientific production, influencing science–policy relationships, and thereby contributing to regional competitiveness. Yet, the spatial dimension of these knowledge brokers has received little attention. Using Framework Programme participations in European cities, we analyse and discuss the location strategy of knowledge brokers, highlighting the importance of co-location with the funding source. Our findings show that knowledge brokers are clustered in Brussels, and not elsewhere, to be closer to the European Commission in order to access strategic, informal and tacit information, while contributing to the construction of transnational R&D networks. While this ‘local buzz’ has positive side effects on the regional innovation system of Brussels; knowledge brokers emerge as a new type of spatially clustered actors shaping the distribution of EU funding for ‘European knowledge pipelines’.
This article aims to increase our understanding of cultural intermediaries, their activities and the way they set up the relationship between the production and consumption of symbolic goods, with a specific focus on intermediaries of artistic work. Among them, in France, agents, tourneurs and managers are intermediaries of the music labour market who aim to develop artists’ career. What role do these underestimated yet more and more numerous intermediaries of artistic work play in achieving pop artists’ recognition? Statistical data show a strong relation between the amount of symbolic capital of artists and having an artistic work intermediary work for them. In order to analyse how intermediaries can help further the artist's access to recognition, I develop a specific use of the concept of symbolic capital that allows a better understanding of social mechanisms of value production. The analysis of qualitative data discloses the various resources and strategies intermediaries use in the artists’ acquisition of symbolic capital. They do promotional work, but also take calculated risks to how to place their artists in the market, and constantly work on their social network to create opportunities.
This paper argues that innovation diffusion is not a rational implementation process, but more accurately portrayed as a highly social process, involving sets of intermediate organizations that contribute to a product’s reputation. Empirically it builds on two case studies, one cultural and one science-based, to demonstrate there are industry differences in where innovations get validated: validating intermediaries are centralized in few global nodes in the case of theatre, and decentralized in each marketplace in the case of pharmaceutical vaccines. This pattern is counterintuitive, because it is different from what we would expect based on the spatial organization of their production activities. These findings have implications for policy: can we assume innovations will readily diffuse (and export) outside their region of origin?
Vinodrai T. Constructing the creative economy: design, intermediaries and institutions in Toronto and Copenhagen, Regional Studies. This article examines how labour market intermediaries (LMIs) secure the position of creative workers in the regional and national economy. Using evidence from Toronto (Canada) and Copenhagen (Denmark), it investigates the strategies and pathways taken by professional associations to secure the position of one group of workers: designers. The findings reveal the pervasive influence of institutions organized at a variety of scales that shape and constrain the ability of LMIs to secure the position of designers in the creative economy. This results in divergence in how LMIs position design and designers in labour markets, public policy, and global markets in each place.
Gibson C. Negotiating regional creative economies: academics as expert intermediaries advocating progressive alternatives, Regional Studies. Academics who research the creative economy document and analyse the creative economy while participating in and promoting the creative economy itself. With this in mind, what role is there for academics as expert intermediaries in advocating for progressive alternatives? What kind of creative economy is being implicitly or explicitly promoted? This concluding article draws together threads of research towards a reflection about the role of academics as expert intermediaries. What matters less is that academics are expert intermediaries, and more that this position of privilege is acknowledged and productively negotiated. In the more intimate moments of narrative intermediation, researchers are active agents in making the creative economy ‘known’, drawing boundaries around the regional context, and translating discourses for and with policy-makers. This is a crucial point of intervention.
Rantisi N. M. and Leslie D. Significance of higher educational institutions as cultural intermediaries: the case of the École nationale de cirque in Montreal, Canada, Regional Studies. Over the last several decades, Montreal has built an international reputation as a ‘circus city’. This reputation is tied to the tremendous success of Cirque du Soleil, but also related to the presence of a number of intermediaries in the city. This paper examines the role of one such intermediary - the École nationale de cirque (National Circus School). The National Circus School is one of the only schools in North America offering an accredited programme in circus arts. It is argued that the school plays an important role in the development of the local circus arts cluster and circus arts conventions by providing training and skill development, and by forging important networks. In particular, this paper examines how the school fosters ‘know-how’, ‘know-who’ and ‘know-what’.
Taylor C. Between culture, policy and industry: modalities of intermediation in the creative economy, Regional Studies. The creative economy has become one of the most internationally pervasive prescriptions for the future of regional spatial economies. Accounts of its characteristics and typical ways of working have pointed to the importance of intermediary agents. Intermediation in the creative economy has, however, been comparatively under-theorized. This paper aims to address this gap by focusing on the topic of intermediary efficacy, that is, by what powers does intermediation bring about effects both for and in the creative economy? It argues that a fuller account of intermediation needs to encompass its three principal modalities: the transactional, the regulatory and the strategic.
This special section analyses the practices and the performativity of intermediaries. Rather than conceiving intermediaries as agents that passively transfer knowledge and objects between the worlds of science, policy and the economy, the focus is on how they mobilise, reframe and structure expertise and policy imperatives. The papers demonstrate that intermediaries come to: collectively explore new worlds and ventures; perform, define and constitute new scientific fields; and actively constitute logics such as scientification or forecasting in the development of techno-logical regulation. In this way, the papers that comprise this special section contribute to a performative understanding of the practices engaged in intermediation that extend and challenge documentary and ideographic modes of analysis that dominate current scholarhip.
This article focuses on how to boost innovation by stimulating the emergence of joint R&D projects within cluster initiatives. Based on empirical studies on R&D-oriented cluster initiatives, it sheds light on cluster R&D management, a key but hardly ever studied issue, and explains how cluster managers attempt to stimulate and to intermediate innovation by applying three central tactics, possibly enriched by other ex ante and ex post peripheral tactics. Drawing on these empirical results, tested on 15 cluster managers, the article then illustrates that the encompassing model of upstream innovation intermediation process proposed by Sieg et al. (2010) addresses in fact only one among the several possible forms of such processes. Then, splitting Noteboom's notion of 'optimal cognitive distance' into two different dimensions, it shows that this refined notion of cognitive proximity/distance between actors helps understand such a diversity of innovation intermediation processes and their varied efficiencies.
The field of policy learning is characterised by concept stretching and a lack of systematic findings. To systematise them, we combine the classic Sartorian approach to classification with the more recent insights on explanatory typologies, distinguishing between the genus and the different species within it. By drawing on the technique of explanatory typologies to introduce a basic model of policy learning, we identify four major genera in the literature. We then generate variation within each cell by using rigorous concepts drawn from adult education research. By looking at learning through the lenses of knowledge utilisation, we show that the basic model can be expanded to reveal sixteen different species. These types are all conceptually possible, but are not all empirically established in the literature. Our reconstruction of the field sheds light on mechanisms and relations associated with alternative operationalisations of learning and the role of actors in the process of knowledge construction and utilisation. By providing a comprehensive typology, we mitigate concept-stretching problems and lay the foundations for the systematic comparison across and within cases of policy learning.
ABSTRACT Clusters influence the way firms cooperate, organize and compete, but clusters and their
related benefits rarely come spontaneously in a straight line of expansion. It is argued that clusters
typically develop in accordance with a life cycle, which includes an evolutionary sequence of steps
where actors from the private and public sectors are engaged and where one or more cluster
facilitators are coordinating and promoting the process. In the literature, the role of cluster
facilitators has almost exclusively been described as static, leaving a research gap about how
this particular role changes during the life cycle of clusters. Inspired by that research gap, this
paper contributes to the understanding of the relationship between cluster development and
cluster facilitation. It brings forward a framework for describing and discussing the exact
changes taking place in the role of cluster facilitators, including the facilitation focus,
competencies and tasks that they make use of along the cluster life cycle. This investigation is
based on a multiple case study consisting of nine different clusters located in Denmark.
Public policy promoting the creative economy has two serious flaws: one, a misperception of culture and creativity as a product of individual genius rather than collective activity; and, two, a willingness to tolerate social dislocation in exchange for urban vitality or competitive advantage. This brief recaps current culture and revitalization research and policy and proposes a new model—a neighborhood based creative economy—that has the potential to move the 21st century city toward shared prosperity and social integration.
Knowledge brokers are people or organizations that move knowledge around and create connections between researchers and their various audiences. This commentary reviews some of the literature on knowledge brokering and lays out some thoughts on how to analyze and theorize this practice. Discussing the invisibility and interstitiality of knowledge brokers, the author argues that social scientists need to analyze more thoroughly their practices, the brokering devices they use, and the benefits and drawbacks of their double peripherality. The author also argues that knowledge brokers do not only move knowledge, but they also produce a new kind of knowledge: brokered knowledge.
This article examines the model of social learning often believed to confirm the autonomy of the state from social pressures, tests it against recent cases of change in British economic policies, and offers a fuller analysis of the role of ideas in policymaking, based on the concept of policy paradigms. A conventional model of social learning is found to fit some types of changes in policy well but not the movement from Keynesian to monetarist modes of policymaking. In cases of paradigm shift, policy responds to a wider social debate bound up with electoral competition that demands a reformulation of traditional conceptions of state-society relations.
If organization theory finds it useful to draw upon some of the ideas that have emerged in cognitive psychology, it will be advantageous to borrow also the terminology used in discussing these ideas. Without working toward a higher level of consistency in terminology than prevails in organization theory today, it will be difficult or impossible to cumulate and assemble into a coherent structure the knowledge we are gaining from individual case studies and experiments. We will be continually reinventing wheels. That is a luxury we cannot afford. The happy band of researchers on organization theory is sufficiently small to be kept fully occupied discovering and verifying the theory just once. (Author) (kr)
While Government claims about the UK as a ‘global creative hub’ continue to be made (Purnell, 2005), the contradictions and tensions in New Labour's policy in the creative industries have become more apparent. These include the tensions between a set of policies for global media businesses versus the support for small firms in local economic development (Gilmore, 2004; Hesmondhalgh & Pratt, 2005), and the tension between citizens and consumers in media and cultural policy (Hesmondhalgh, 2005). Equally apparent are the tensions between economic development of these sectors and social inclusion. In the UK, arguably more than other countries, the rhetoric of Creative Industries has been tied into political ideas about the links between economic competitiveness and social inclusion. The stated aims for creative industry development have thus been twofold—to increase jobs and GDP, while simultaneously ameliorating social exclusion and countering long-standing patterns of uneven economic development. Research, however, suggests that supporting the creative industries is, at best, a problematic way of tackling the issues of economic and social exclusion. The effects of gentrification on creative industry working and living space (Evans & Shaw, 2004); the patterns of informal hiring and career progression in these sectors (Leadbeater & Oakley, 2001) and the concentration of much economic activity in London and the South East, all suggest that the development of these sectors might exacerbate rather than address patterns of economic inequality.
Creativity is becoming the currency of the contemporary economy. A sustained literature in economic geography and elsewhere has pointed to the importance of creativity, especially in the cultural industries. Production in these sectors often rests upon access to deep pools of highly skilled talent, primarily in large urban regions. However, the recent literature has stated that cultural or creative inputs are not limited to these industries, but also extend into other sectors of the economy that benefit from access to the same (local) labor markets. It is argued that creative work is primarily project based and that highly skilled creative professionals move seamlessly from project to project and from job to job. This circulation of talent is viewed as crucial to the flow of knowledge and the (re)production of practices, norms, and reputations across firm and industry boundaries within the city-region. Despite the compelling nature of this description, the labor market dynamics that underpin this circulation of creative workers remain poorly specified and only weakly substantiated. This article addresses this issue by investigating systematically the local interfirm and interindustry dynamics of creative labor markets. Using evidence from the detailed career histories of practicing designers, as well as in-depth interviews with various institutional actors in Toronto, it documents how the careers of designers are characterized by precariousness and high levels of circulation within the local labor market. The analysis also demonstrates the importance of reputation building, repeated collaborations, shared career paths, and mediation by a constellation of formal and informal intermediary actors for career development.
This contribution illustrates how a videogame firm copes in managing creativity and expression of artistic values, while meeting the constraints of the economics of mass entertainment. The research is based on a case study in one of the largest video game studios in the world located in Montreal, Canada. The approach considers that the creative units of the firms are the communities of specialists (game developers, software programmers, etc.). Each of these communities, which have found a fertile soil in Montreal that nurtures their creative potential, is focused on both exploration and exploitation of a given domain of knowledge. In order to benefit from these sources of creativity, the integration forces implemented by the managers of the firm to bind the creative units together for achieving commercial successes reveal a hybrid form of project management which combines decentralized platforms with strict constraints on time, and a specific management of space that favors informal interactions. However, we suggest that the integration forces put forward by the firm are not just for harnessing creative units: they also generate creative slacks for further expansion of creativity. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.