Research Agenda
In association with its international partners, the CreativeEconomies research venture focuses its research on six areas. We attach great importance to these questions based on the current scientific discourses, our many discussions with involved actors and the political and social debates worldwide.
1. Which dynamics characterise the creative economies? By creative economies, we mean the economic, social, cultural and scientific fields of action in which novelty is created. And in which new ideas and models of “economies” and “economics” are developed and tested at the same time. Besides creation and innovation processes, the dynamics of economisation and culturalization also occupy a pivotal role.
2. How is value created and how is its evaluation ensured? The creative economies always revolve around new value creation constellations: Which value is created for whom (“output”)? Which resources are created, mobilised and invested for this purpose (“input”)? Which processes and networks interlink input and output? And how are evaluation processes, platforms and devices changing? We need to better understand these interrelations from a global perspective.
3. How do actors and the wider context see creativity? Today there is much talk about creativity, creation and innovation, including talk about an actual “creativity dispositive” and the compulsion to innovate. We observe which concepts and practices of creation are important. We describe creation and innovation processes in different fields of action. We focus on “creativity” as a value. And we discuss the competition for the attribution of creativity in many fields.
4. Which entrepreneurial strategies are pursued? Given that value creation can be understood and evaluated in very different ways for good reasons, actors in the creative economies are constantly challenged not only to postulate values in their entrepreneurial strategies, but also to establish the necessary valuations. Entrepreneurial strategies postulate value creation, create the organisational prerequisites for its generation now and in the future, and implement value systems in the form of valuation processes, devices and platforms.
5. Which alternative institutionalisations are demanded and realised? Time and again, the question arises whether new value creation and corresponding strategies stand a chance in the context of existing institutions. Or to what extent these contexts must be critically questioned and anchored in alternative institutionalisations. The creative economies are a laboratory for such alternative institutionalisations, as a precondition for the creation of novelty, new forms of value creation and new types of valuation.
6. Which consequences arise for governance practice? The creative economies are permanently transforming as fields of action. These dynamics of change imply that there can be no static description of the creative economies. Nor is it possible to control and plan their development with conventional means and methods. This in turn has consequences for governance practice: instead of management, we speak of curation, which creates the contexts and at the same time becomes an actor itself.
Answering these questions, developing relevant perspectives on the field of action of the creative economies, and interpreting these dynamics implies an notion of research (→ see Research Concept) that sees itself both as creative practice and as entrepreneurial engagement: this explains our approach to the creative economies as a research venture.