Creative frontiers: How categories and structures impact businesses based on creativity

Massimo Maoret and Candace Jones have co-edited an academic volume exploring the impact of social structures and categories on creative industries -- including the businesses of advertising, art, architecture, music, fashion and wine.

How is art monetized? What's style got to do with it? What are the key levers to success in businesses based on creativity and cultural products — and how do they work? In the realm of creative industries — including advertising, art, architecture, music, fashion and wine — there are many factors that influence outcomes, as explored in Frontiers of Creative Industries, a volume in the series Research in the Sociology of Organizations.

Co-edited by professors Massimo Maoret of IESE and Candace Jones of the University of Edinburgh Business School, this volume looks specifically at creative industries' social structures and categories. Social structures here include the pattern of relationships between the individuals, groups, and/or networks that enable the production and consumption of cultural products. For example, a street performance may have a direct producer-audience structure, but a Broadway show may include producers, critics, brokers, and ticket-holders. Meanwhile, categories here are defined as the frameworks that audiences and artists use to evaluate what kind of art or culture they consume or make.

So, while other volumes have explored economic and social perspectives on the businesses built on creative outputs, this one gathers sociological approaches to help determine which producers gain opportunities, recognition and rewards.

From bubbly to swing to valuable art

One chapter, written by Amandine Ody-Brasier, looks at how traditional Champagne grape producers take advantage of their products' strong reputation in the luxury category for strategic market positioning. Another by Sonia Coman-Ernstoff and Damon Phillips offers an analysis of how more ambiguous product categories — who really knows how to define what swing music is? — can be more adaptable and thus have greater longevity. In this case, long live swing! Whatever it is.

Contributors also explore how social structures and categories interact within creative systems. For example, management professor Stoyan Sgourev looks at how the world of art and finance mutually influence each other. He argues that art acquires financial value on the market via monetization, but through "Monet-ization," art is categorized as culturally valuable, depending on how investors and art collectors learn to interpret novelty.

An afterword by professors Paul Hirsch and Kartikeya Bajpai reflects on changes seen in creative industries research over the years. With this volume sparking new areas for research, fresh insights into creative industries are surely on the way.

Publishing note

This 2018 volume collects nine articles, first presented at the 2016 Creative Industries conference which was hosted and financed by the University of Edinburgh Business School. In addition to the aforementioned contributors, Erik Aadland, Noah Askin, Gino Cattani, Lærke Christiansen, Simone Ferriani, Santi Furnari, Frédéric Godart, Joeri Mol, Marianna Rolbina and Silviya Svejenova also wrote or co-wrote chapters.