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This chapter adopts a historical perspective to show how ‘creativity’ has been defined in relation to changing approaches to the creative and cultural industries in cultural policy and management, focusing on the UK introduction of ‘creative industries’ as a major cultural policy theme in 1997.

Recent cultural policy towards the so-called ‘creative industries’ has tended to treat creativity in terms of individual creativity and talent. Explicit creative industries policies date from the late 1990s, in particular from the UK government’s Creative Industries Mapping Document (DCMS 1998) launched in 1998. The definitions, terminology and assumptions of UK creative industries’ policy were widely imitated in other countries, notably in the United Nations’ Creative Economy Report (UNCTAD 2008) and in national cultural policies.

However, the policy rhetoric of ‘individual creativity, skill and talent’ contrasts with a longer view of ‘creativity’ amongst those working in the arts and with academic and policy perspectives on the ‘cultural industries’. Here there is a greater emphasis on the collective processes which underpin cultural production. ‘Creativity’ is no longer solely the preserve of creative genius. This earlier policy tradition has continued to be championed in academic circles and assumes a sociocultural definition of creativity.

Latterly this notion of collective creativity in the creative and cultural industries has received new impetus through an emphasis on consumer creativity or ‘creative consumption’. This third perspective on creativity has been facilitated by new digital tools which have increasingly ‘democratised’ the creative process, as well as reorienting the creative industries value chain from cultural production to cultural consumption. In this context, creativity is democratised and associated with everyday participation; an open-ended definition of creativity is informed by a ‘postmodern’ refusal to privilege one form of expression, or one definition, over another.

These opposing tendencies have never been resolved. As a result, attempts by both cultural policy and management to engage with creativity and the creative industries have been thwarted by contradictory assumptions and objectives. This chapter will consider the ‘creativity’ of the creative industries from a historical perspective, beginning with the Creative Industries Mapping Document from 1998. The chapter will then revisit earlier definitions of the ‘cultural industries’ from the 1980s before reverting to contemporary perspectives on creative consumption.

‘Individual Creativity, Skill and Talent’

In 1998, the Creative Industries Mapping Document defined the creative industries as

those industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property. (DCMS 1998)

The document set out to map the scope of the creative industries in the UK, categorised into 13 sectors. The economic contributions, in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), export earnings and employment statistics, were highlighted in a series of tables and graphics. Politically, the document signalled the importance of the ‘creative industries’ in UK cultural policy, absorbing the older categories of ‘arts’ and ‘cultural industries’ and establishing a link between creative talent and economic growth (‘through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property’). The definition highlighted individual creativity and innate talent as something with an independent, prior existence, separate from collective systems. It also focused primarily on outcomes rather than processes, especially economic outcomes in the form of intellectual property. The accompanying list of 13 branches of the ‘creative industries’ was more pragmatic, drawing a line around an existing set of activities rather than developing the conceptual definition introduced at the start of the document.

The reasons for applying a new definition to an existing field were themselves largely expedient in relation to policy priorities for the incoming ‘New Labour’ government of 1997. In this case, the policy objectives had already been set, including the development of a vibrant ‘creative economy’ to replace Britain’s declining manufacturing industry, capitalising on some of Britain’s perceived strengths in a global market (e.g., the export earnings derived from British music and broadcasting) and the development of ‘creativity’ among young people as a part of UK education policy. The arguments, data and definitions around creative industries were tailored to fit these policies rather than used to inform policy. Despite some conceptual problems with the original definition (are there any ‘uncreative’ industries?), this pragmatic logic may explain why the terminology has survived. The definition was repeated in the 2001 mapping document (DCMS 2001) and in subsequent UK cultural policy reports. From here, the definition was seized upon by other national governments (e.g., Taiwan, Germany, Australia); only United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and France held out strongly for the older ‘cultural industries’ tradition (this will be explained further in the next section).

Inevitably, there were criticisms from those working in the subsidised arts (theatre, classical music and other performing arts, museums and galleries) who feared the government’s new interest in ‘creative industries’ would marginalise them. There was also concern that the new emphasis on individual talent and marketable outcomes placed too much emphasis on the economic impacts of creativity rather than on social development and social change. The first of these concerns proved unfounded; government cultural policy has remained marginal to commercial creative industries and is still predominantly focused on ‘the arts’ rather than commercial popular culture. The second accusation that cultural policy had taken a ‘neo-liberal’ turn towards marketising the individual talents of the creative industries and their profitable products as mere commodities would cast a longer shadow.

For the purposes of this chapter, government policies towards the creative industries are considered in so far as they manifest attitudes towards creativity. The first of these assumptions is that creativity is above all a matter of individual talent or genius, in line with early (and much discredited) ‘trait-based’ theories of creativity. The second assumption is that creativity can (and should) be defined by its outcomes, in particular by its measurable economic outputs. A third assumption, less explicit than the other two, is that creativity occurs at the start of the creative industries value chain, at the point of idea generation or ideation. This is where ‘intellectual property’ is ‘generated’, in order to be subsequently ‘exploited’.

These assumptions have recurred both in UK government policies and in approaches to management of the creative industries more widely. The education policy of ‘Creative Partnerships’ (an Arts Council England initiative to build partnerships between cultural organisations and schools) was referenced in the 2001 Mapping Document. As noted by Choe and Neelands (2010), education policy in England repositioned ‘creativity’ as an ability to generate ideas; from here, ‘creativity’ was elided with ‘innovation’ and ‘entrepreneurship’ through curriculum reforms and through agencies such as Creative Partnerships and NESTA (Seltzer and Bentley 1999). The old question as to whether creativity can be taught remained unresolved, but there was an assumption that creativity is a ‘special’ talent to be released, rather than a universal capacity which can be cultivated in every child (NACCE 1999). Above all, ‘creativity’ in schools was geared towards economic outcomes rather than artistic or social transformation; creative young people either would get jobs in the burgeoning creative industries or would generate profitable innovations and intellectual property assets in the wider economy.

In a management context, the separation of ‘creativity’ as a discrete stage in the value chain isolates creative work and creative workers from the organisational systems which sustain and inform them. This division of labour can lead to dysfunctional relationships between workers and between competing objectives and priorities in the organisation. Consequently, at the time when UK government was focusing on individual talent in creative industries policies, creative industries practice was beginning to move in the opposite direction towards a more holistic approach. In the advertising industry, the ‘siloing’ of individual talent—the tendency to protect ‘creative’ copywriters and art directors from commercial realities—was seen to be ineffective. Instead, creative inputs were needed across all aspects of the agency, from client liaison to planning and media buying. The 30-second television commercial was being overtaken by multimedia, multiplatform campaigns, and planners were replacing creative directors at the core of the agency. Creativity was no longer the possession of a few maverick ‘creatives’ who could have a stroke of genius followed by a long lunch, while the rest of the agency revolved around them; instead, multiple agencies and individual talents cooperated to deliver a ‘full service’ to their clients. Creativity in advertising came to be defined in relation to strategic planning or the choice of media channels rather than merely the generation of ‘creative’ ideas.

Changing models of creativity in advertising reflect a recognition in business that creative ideas are not enough (Levitt 1963); the development and implementation of ideas is also part of the creative process. Across all the creative industries, there has also been a gradual blurring of the lines between idea generation and the ways in which ideas are packaged and experienced further along the industry value chain. Ideas are cheap; their value depends on how they are delivered and to whom. All of this leads to a more ‘democratic’ model of creativity which is no longer the preserve of special talents or a special type of thinking. This more collaborative, more process-based model of creativity is also deeply embedded in cultural practice; it predates the politicised definition of ‘creative industries’ and recalls the older framework of ‘cultural industries’ from the 1980s.

The Culture of Creativity

Before 1997, commercial media and entertainment industries were referred to as ‘cultural industries’. The phrase had its origins in Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique of the ‘culture industry’ which described the commodification of culture through mass reproduction and the ‘mass deception’ of audiences. Reacting against negative stereotypes of popular culture and mass consumption, activists and cultural workers in the 1980s introduced the plural ‘cultural industries’ to highlight the democratic, emancipatory potential of popular culture as an alternative to the ‘elitist’ art of mainstream cultural institutions. The first cultural industries policies in the UK emerged in cities like London, Manchester, Sheffield, and Liverpool, led by left-wing metropolitan councils who wished to divert arts subsidies towards grassroots cultural participation (Garnham 2005; GLC 1986). Today ‘cultural industries’ is still preferred by many academic commentators over the more recent policy rhetoric of ‘creative industries’ (Hesmondhalgh 2002; Jeffcutt and Pratt 2002).

Whereas ‘creative industries’ are constructed around an individualised model of creative genius, ‘cultural industries’ referenced the collective roots of individual creativity in shared values and traditions. Cultural policy took an interest in popular cultural technologies including video, film workshops and music recording and in the diversity of popular working class art forms, especially those emerging from ethnic and cultural minorities. Many of these popular cultural forms had been the focus of academic cultural studies, particularly in the work of Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall. Williams’ description of a ‘structure of feeling’ within which both artists and audiences construct meanings and values is in turn linked to a Marxist theory of ‘base and superstructure’ in which artistic ‘culture’ is shaped by social structures and institutions, especially social class (Williams 1973, 1977).

Where Williams and Hall deviated from orthodox Marxism was in their belief that culture in the aesthetic sense can shape social structures as well as the other way around (Williams 1971; Hall 1980); as with Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony, culture (and by extension the ‘cultural’ industries) thus became for Williams and Hall a site where contested meanings and values battle for dominance. Williams and Hall were influential figures in the emergence of cultural studies as an academic discipline in the 1970s and 1980s, notably in the Birmingham Centre for Cultural Studies.

In contemporary cultural policy studies, the influence of Williams and Hall has largely been superseded by that of Bourdieu, especially his theories of taste and cultural capital in cultural consumption and his analysis of the field and ‘habitus’ of cultural production. Like Williams and Hall, Bourdieu was interested in the social and institutional forces which shape cultural production and consumption within a defined field (Bourdieu 1993). In the USA, Herbert Gans, Herbert Schiller and Noam Chomsky developed a comparable theoretical approach to media studies, again highlighting the institutional power structures which frame the production and reception of cultural and media products (Schiller 1989; Gans 1974).

From this cultural studies perspective, the ‘cultural’ industries reflected not only an aesthetic culture of ideas and self-expression but also a sociological culture in which social class, ethnicity, gender and the industrial and political structures of power shape individual consciousness. In particular, the cultural expression of working class communities and ethnic minorities during the 1980s was seen to be expressed not in the ‘official’ culture of high arts and established arts institutions, but through commercial popular culture, sometimes by reading against the grain of the received text or by wilfully subverting mainstream interpretations (Willis 1990). Cultural studies highlighted the subversive subcultures and self-projections made possible through the cultural industries, including television, film, popular music and popular fiction. Cultural policy makers in turn picked up on this ‘alternative’ reading of the cultural industries as a source of a progressive, emancipatory politics—the antithesis of Adorno and Horkheimer’s view of the culture industry as mass deception.

According to critics of the ‘creative industries’ discourse, it is precisely this radical, progressive politics of the ‘cultural industries’ which has been washed out of the new, business-friendly, politically colourless model of creativity and creative industries described in the previous section (McGuigan 2005). It may also explain why many academic critics prefer to hold onto the terminology of ‘cultural industries’, and why ‘cultural industries’ was considered a politically risky concept for a modernising ‘New’ Labour government in 1997 seeking to distance itself from the cultural policies of left-wing city councils such as London’s Greater London Council (GLC), ‘the People’s Republic of Sheffield’ and the other metropolitan councils which had been disbanded by the Conservative government in 1986.

Where does creativity fit into this account of the cultural industries and cultural studies? Williams’ ‘structure of feeling’ and Hall’s analysis of social class in popular culture highlight a collective consciousness behind individual self-expression. The sociological analysis of culture by Bourdieu also emphasises the significant effects of the ‘field’ or ‘domain’ within which creativity occurs. Finally, cultural studies highlight the ways in which audiences or ‘consumers’ renegotiate meanings according to their own experience, and suggest that this experience is itself shaped by the same institutional frameworks as the field of cultural production. The process of creativity, first as an active shaping of expressive possibilities by social context at the point of production, then as an active reinterpretation of meaning at the point of consumption, takes precedence over the product.

In order to release this everyday creativity, cultural industries policies in UK cities like London and Sheffield attempted to build an infrastructure which could open up creative expression to all, especially those who for economic or social reasons had not previously had such opportunities before. Rather than seeking out individual talent, cultural policy focused on providing technologies, resources and professional support for those outside the charmed circle of high culture and subsidised arts. Whether or not such policies were actually successful, the ideology behind them was premised on a collective, participatory model of creativity. Individual creative talent might be nurtured as a result, but the stated aim of urban cultural industries policies was to enable a social process of collective creativity.

This version of collective creativity fits with what has become a dominant paradigm in creativity theory, described by Keith Sawyer as the ‘sociocultural’ model (Sawyer 2006, 4). The ‘field’ and ‘habitus’ described by Bourdieu are comparable to the ‘field’ and ‘domain’ in the systems theory of creativity described by Csikszentmihalyi (1988). Access to resources, knowledge of the domain or domain-specific expertise, relationships with other creative individuals and contacts with ‘gatekeepers’ who can approve and support the creative act all become integral to the creative process (Becker 1982; Csikszentmihalyi 1988; Weisberg 1993, 2010). From this perspective, the individual talent and original ideas prioritised in creative industries policies are not enough; cultural industries policies focus instead on the processes and systems by which these talents and ideas are nurtured, recognised and developed.

Cultural industries policies also highlight the collective norms and assumptions which validate creativity. Original ideas may be novel, but to qualify as creative ideas, they must also be valuable (Boden 1994, 75–75). That perception of value depends upon collective norms in a defined field (Wolff 1993). To become an artist and to be recognised as such, cultural producers must shape their work to fit with traditions and technical standards prevalent among fellow creators and with expectations and needs of audiences. Value judgements conform to the dominant beliefs and institutions in the field. This remains true even if their work attempts to transform or transcend those norms and expectations; such radical transformations must still be framed in a language or form which others can understand. This fits with Margaret Boden’s argument that creativity consists in shifting or stretching the boundaries of an existing paradigm rather than thinking outside them (Boden 1994, 79–84).

In terms of creativity theory, the cultural industries also encompass a multistage, multidimensional model of creative thinking. Where the creative industries highlighted individual creativity at the point of ideation, cultural industries (and cultural studies) acknowledge the bigger picture of institutions, technologies, resources and intermediaries which add value to that original idea or individual. This more inclusive approach mirrors the multiple competences identified in Kirton’s Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI) (Kirton 1984), De Bono’s thinking hats (De Bono 1993) or Belbin’s team theory (Belbin 1993). Where creative industries policies and management focus on innovators, cultural industries take in the work of adaptors and the full range of collaborative networks and systems which connect adaption and innovation.

What both the cultural industries and the creative industries discourses have in common is a focus on cultural production. Whether cultural production comes from individual talent or results from social circumstances and tectonic shifts in the ‘structure of feeling’, the primary outcome is still an act of creation. Yet cultural studies also points to the importance of audiences and consumption as the site where meaning is created. This acknowledgement of the power of consumers adds a further dimension to the cultural/creative industries, and another perspective on the theory and practice of creativity. Like the ‘cultural industries’ perspective of the 1980s, discussions of creative consumption in the creative industries again highlight the social and collective systems which frame individual creativity. This time the focus moves from production to consumption.

Creative Consumption

If ‘sociocultural’ models represented the dominant paradigm in creativity research in the early 2000s, there are signs that paradigm may be shifting towards a more consumer-centred model in the creative industries.

The products of the creative industries are ‘symbolic goods’. The meaning and value of these goods depend primarily on a subjective act of interpretation by consumers. This results in high levels of unpredictability and requires a ‘creative’ approach to strategy. Definitions of creativity require a combination of novelty and value, but attributing ‘value’ in the creative industries is problematic. As Holden notes, ‘value’ can take many forms (Holden 2004). According to the 1998 mapping document, the creative industries may generate economic value through the production of intellectual property. The creative industries also generate social value, in the form of desired social outcomes such as community cohesion, new forms of identity, well-being or cultural diversity (such claims were at the core of 1980s cultural industries policies)—as well as some less desirable social outcomes (exclusivity, nepotism, selfishness). Clearly, they also produce aesthetic value. But whichever criteria are used (economic, social or aesthetic), the true measure of value cannot be accurately known until the point of consumption.

The subjectivity of value in the creative industries is not in itself a new discovery. Audiences, despite the best efforts of market research and critical assessments, have always been unpredictable. What is perhaps new is both the speed with which consumers can communicate their opinions, and the direction of communication. The flow of communication is no longer a call and response between producer and consumer, but peer to peer exchange amongst consumers. New production and distribution technologies have ‘democratised’ value in the creative industries by making this communication more widespread and more rapid, allowing consumers in effect to generate their own value around shared experiences. In many (but not all) cases, the consumer response is raw and unfiltered, bypassing the intermediaries, including media critics and industry gatekeepers (Hirsch 1972), who would previously have interpreted and manipulated such responses.

The other new development is the short step from commenting on shared cultural experiences to co-authoring them. Given the availability and affordability of tools allowing everybody to create and share content online, the distinctions between home-made and professional work, between producer and consumer, have shrunk to the point of invisibility. ‘Vloggers’ on YouTube are amateur critics turned cultural producers with their own channels and their own followings. Word of mouth success through the peer-to-peer network translates into conventional publishing and distribution deals, but the value has been discovered and created within the network.

When Fifty Shades of Grey was self-published, its initial success depended on a word-of-mouth success among readers through social media likes, shares and blogs. This in turn led to a film deal and persuaded a mainstream book publisher, Vintage, to offer the author E.L. James a conventional publishing contract. Would the book have been picked up by a publisher without that initial vote of confidence by readers? Most reviewers and many publishers remain unimpressed by the literary merits of James’s book. The subject matter (erotic thriller, told from a woman’s point of view for a mainly female readership) is unfamiliar and risky. In effect, the wisdom of the crowd substituted for the normal gatekeepers (publishers, agents, reviewers) in assessing the future value of the book. That route to publication has been followed by other self-published authors, bloggers, musicians and film-makers, with traditional publishers increasingly willing to follow the social media hits rather than attempting to lead public taste.

Again, the ‘Do-It-Yourself’ culture of self-publishing and amateur creators is not in itself new, albeit digital technologies have significantly lowered the barriers to entry in terms of cost and quality of production. What is more significant is the social character of social media. Value is generated collectively through ‘shares’ and ‘likes’. Even though objectively most users know that reviews on Amazon or TripAdvisor are subject to fraud and self-promotion, consumers tend to trust horizontal communication amongst fellow consumers over vertical communication from marketers and ‘experts’. The value component in creativity is accumulated through the uses and recommendations of fellow consumers, not from any intrinsic properties in the product. The value thus created is part of the ‘cognitive surplus’ which Clay Shirky identifies with Wikipedia and YouTube (Shirky 2010); millions of interactions between consumers add value to cultural content, and the cumulative weight of multiple recommendations and shares creates value more effectively than the most carefully orchestrated media and marketing campaigns.

The result is an everyday creativity in which the line between professional and amateur, producer and consumer, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ art becomes blurred. Creativity becomes an interactive, collective process in which the distinct stages of value creation bleed into each other and where consumption becomes an active part of the creative process.

Creative consumption democratises the creative process, inviting consumers to remix, repost and re-edit original material, as well as produce DIY content of their own. At its best, the new online creativity is liberating, playful and democratic, allowing ideas to spread and trigger new reflections rather than being locked into the commercial restrictions of ‘intellectual property’. At its worst, this is ‘death of the author’ with a smiley face. Andrew Keen (2007) describes the new ‘cult of the amateur’ as a collective dumbing down, threatening the integrity of our culture and the livelihood of our artists.

Other commentators have expressed concern over the loss of any consensus on creative value. Once the gatekeepers who previously legitimised one art work over another are removed, anything goes. As Carey observed, a work of art today is whatever the recipient considers to be a work of art (Carey 2005). Linked to this observation is a third source of anxiety, the narcissism of contemporary cultural consumption; the consumer becomes more important than the product. Social media commentators like Malcolm Gladwell (2000) and Seth Godin (2000), echoing Marshall Mcluhan, have argued that in the viral spread of information online, the messenger becomes more important than the message. Certainly, social media discussion forums on news and gossip websites, on Facebook and on Twitter show users constructing and promoting an online identity and personal profile as much as they are responding to a given topic. In relation to theories of creativity, the creative input becomes less important than the creative output.

Above all, creative consumption shifts the emphasis towards how rather than what content is being consumed. In the creative industries, this means moving from a value system centred on the value and integrity of intellectual property towards a model based on consumer engagement and participation. The emergence of new gatekeepers like Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google in the creative and media industries, replacing or challenging the dominance of traditional publishers, distributors and media companies reflects and consolidates this shift, reconfiguring the balance of power in the creative industries. With their relentless focus on consumer engagement (and the consumer data which underwrite their revenues), these new gatekeepers facilitate the sharing economy; to varying degrees, they may also be complicit in systematically eroding the intellectual property rights of content creators. In order to continue growing their businesses, they are continually offering new tools for creative consumption, encouraging consumers to believe that creativity is a universal activity for all, not the craft of a talented minority.

Individual creativity, skill and talent have been superseded by an awareness that ‘making is connecting’ (Gauntlett 2011); by sharing ideas and working collaboratively, ordinary people can achieve ‘collective creativity’. Some of them may have ambitions to pursue an individual creative career, but the majority will be happy with a different kind of achievement, creating and sharing information and experiences for their own enjoyment. This might even be seen as a return to a more ancient tradition of creativity, rooted in community and shared rituals, predating the emergence of the professional creative artist in the modern era. Theories of postmodern marketing refer to the ‘tribalisation’ of markets, in which consumers manufacture their own shared identity through consumption (Cova 1996).

Creativity in this context becomes a form of shared expression, with value and meaning produced at the point of consumption rather than in the mind of the creator. Creative consumption is democratic, inclusive and playful; it meets the criteria of novelty and value. Whereas the ‘creative industries model’ focused on economic outcomes and the ‘cultural industries model’ focused on the social outcomes of creative outputs or ‘content’, creative consumption insists that creative outputs are themselves absorbed within a collective social process. The work of creativity is never done, but continually reshared and reinvented (Lessig 2008).

Three Perspectives on Creativity

In the final part of this chapter, I will consider the implications of these changing changing perspectives on ‘creativity’ for policy and management in the creative industries. In this chapter, I have outlined three models of creativity. The first is associated with the ‘creative industries’, as formulated by the UK government and replicated in creative industries policies worldwide. The second reflects a longer perspective on the ‘cultural industries’ of the 1980s. Finally, I have highlighted a third perspective on creativity shaped through the reconstructed creative industries of today, where social media, creative consumption and the tribalisation of meaning relocate creativity from cultural production to ‘creative consumption’.

In the context of this handbook’s focus on creativity and culture, these changing models of creativity also reflect different models of culture. The ‘creative industries’ model of creativity views culture as a set of aesthetic outputs, disconnected from ‘cultures’ in the anthropological sense. In contrast, the ‘cultural industries’ perspective sees creativity emerging organically from an anthropological model of culture as a ‘whole way of life’. Finally, the more participatory model of creative consumption reflects a sociological interest in culture as a set of relationships and identities continually in flux, refracting both creativity and culture through changing users and contexts.

One of the aims of this handbook is to highlight the variety of perspectives arising in different fields and disciplines. ‘Creativity’ in the creative industries has suffered from semantic dilution—this lack of definition may itself be politically expedient, allowing policy makers and those working in the field to apply the term liberally like ‘political margarine’ or ‘magic dust’ in order to vindicate particular policies or practices (Tusa 2003; Jeffcutt and Pratt 2002). The uncertainty extends to the creative industries themselves (and to the cultural industries before them); it is notoriously difficult to acquire accurate data on the scope and value of these industries because statistical categories have tended to be adapted to the political argument of the moment rather than vice versa (Selwood 2006). This strategic vagueness has served the interests of politicians and practitioners, allowing vested interests to exaggerate the scope and significance of the creative industries, to legitimise investment and other policy interventions and to demonstrate a supporting narrative of success and growth. Definitions of creativity have accordingly switched opportunistically between the three versions of creativity outlined in this chapter (Fig. 32.1).

Fig. 32.1
figure 1

Three perspectives on creativity in the creative industries

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Across these different versions of ‘creativity’ in the creative industries, there is a fundamental tension between a view of creativity as the product of individual genius and a view of creativity as a collective process. This in turn sets differing priorities for policy and for management.

The individualistic, output-driven model of creativity promoted in the UK government’s Creative Industries Mapping Document is allied to a neo-liberal policy which trusts in the transformative power of individual talent rather than in any external intervention. For managers, the individual talents do not require active management, only selection; the managerial approach is based on the recruitment and retention of talent, and the provision of a conducive, unpressured environment in which creative individuals can take risks and thrive.

The ‘cultural industries’ model implies a closer alignment with social policies towards inclusion and diversity. It requires managers to intervene in the creative process, in order to achieve the right alignment between people, process and culture, for example, by adjusting the balance in a creative team (Kirton’s Adaption-Innovation Index), channelling resources to develop promising ideas, or connecting one part of the organisation to another.

The ‘creative consumption’ model requires a focus on marketing and on optimising the customer experience rather than managing the creative process itself, but again requires managers and policy makers to take a more active, facilitating role. This has been reflected by a power shift within the creative industries from traditional intermediaries concerned with investing in and exploiting intellectual property to new intermediaries concerned with facilitating and monetising exchange and interaction among consumers.

Most psychological and organisational definitions of creativity contain two components, novelty and value (or ‘fitness for purpose’). Such a combination in turn derives from a combination of divergent thinking and convergent thinking. Individual creativity, skill and talent might be associated with divergent thinking, producing a stream of novel ideas injected into a predictable system by maverick outsiders. Collective creative processes might be biased towards convergent thinking, emphasising the collective values and uses which shape individual creativity and the valuable outcomes of a creative process. If either of these modes of thinking dominates, the creative outcome is also skewed. Too much divergent thinking results in an excess of novelty which will not necessarily connect to perceptions of value among users. Too much convergent thinking results in an excessive emphasis on valuable outcomes, reinforcing existing models and preconceptions without introducing the necessary element of surprise to come up with novel solutions. The challenge is to combine these modes of thinking to achieve a bisociative combination which is both novel and valuable.

In this chapter, the ‘creative industries model’ is associated with an individualistic form of self-expression, which prizes originality and talent. The role of the manager is to provide space for the talented individual to operate, free of constraints and inhibitions. The ‘cultural industries model’ is associated with a shared ‘structure of feeling’ in which individual ideas both reflect and reconfigure shared values. Managers are much more actively involved in this version of creativity, nurturing, orchestrating and connecting; indeed management itself becomes part of the creative process. If the ‘creative industries model’ carries a risk of self-indulgence and irrelevance, the ‘cultural industries model’ risks becoming repetitive and pragmatic rather than transformative.

The challenge for the creative industries is to connect these different dimensions of creativity (novelty plus value) and creative thinking (divergent/transformative versus convergent/incremental) in order to produce marketable products. It could be that ‘creative consumption’ offers such a connection, because it combines individual unpredictability with collective systems, and because the original idea is linked to the valuable extensions of that idea by users. The individualistic creativity of both the content creator and individual consumers combine with the social creativity accumulated through the iterative sharing and adapting of ideas amongst users. The creative process is iterative and incremental, with the potential for unexpected twists and reinventions through the sharing and mediation of ideas and for added value through social interaction. The managerial effort becomes one of following rather than leading the creative process, capturing and repackaging consumer-led innovation and developing interactive, experiential platforms which connect consumers and producers.

Creative consumption has the potential to open up new forms of creativity as users exploit the availability of new tools and networks to remix and reinvent cultural content. Two obstacles threaten to undermine this potential. First of all, intellectual property laws are premised on a Western legal emphasis on individual authorship and ownership, in which adaptations and reworkings of original content may be regarded as infringement of the creator’s rights; extensions to the term of copyright and legal precedents favour established creators over new entrants.

The other threat comes from the diametrically opposite direction, with global intermediaries happy to promote a sharing economy in which intellectual property laws are cut back to allow users to exchange content for free. However, this collective creativity is itself commodified and exploited as a means of extracting consumer data and selling advertising. Creative consumption thus ceases to have any meaningful value beyond the generation of information about the consumer. Whilst participants in creative online communities might feel ‘creative’ and ‘connected’, their work is only valued for the number and frequency of interactions they generate, not for any intrinsic creative meaning or effect.

All may not be lost. Alongside the global corporations like Facebook and Google, independent creative enterprises and creative individuals are also ‘sharing’ content with users and finding new ways to generate creative value. Songwriters, writers and film-makers are working with fans to add value to their own work and to create shared creative experiences through live shows and customised interactions among users. This is a new creative economy, where artists and users can both benefit from creative consumption, rather than seeing the profits going to third parties in the form of advertising revenues.

Conclusion

The ‘creative industries’ is a relatively new coinage. Following its introduction in the UK in 1998 (and following from Australia’s ‘Creative Australia’ before that), the ‘creative industries’ have placed creativity in the centre of a new industry sector which is driving the emergence of a new ‘creative economy’. The marriage of creativity and commerce was initially an expedient one, and this chapter argues that the ‘creativity’ of the creative industries was not well understood or defined by policy makers, possibly quite deliberately. Nevertheless, the concept has matured from an initial emphasis on ‘individual creativity, skill and talent’ to a more complex definition which encompasses the older ‘cultural industries’ perspective on creativity, as a social process and one which generates social value as well as economic outcomes. The growing attention paid to ‘creative consumption’ in the creative industries highlights a new model of creativity, in which an original creative idea merges with the creative iterations of that idea by consumers. This raises challenges for the creative industries themselves, notably regarding the legal definition of authorship and copyright and the need to develop new business models which can build on and commodify creative consumption.

It also challenges definitions of the ‘value’ of creativity. ‘Value’ both in creativity theory and in the creative industries remains a contentious issue. For many critics (McMaster 2008; Jowell 2004; Holden 2004; Tusa 2003), creative industries policies seemed to abandon faith in the intrinsic quality of art for more instrumental goals. Whereas the instrumentalism of ‘cultural industries’ had been rooted in social policy goals (inclusion, access, participation, diversity), the new rhetoric of ‘creative’ industries favoured economic instrumentalism. In the creative consumption model, the value of creativity depends on commodifying consumer experiences. According to this logic, a novel idea is made valuable through its use, not through any intrinsic merit or quality. That answer may be either liberating or depressing, depending on the creative uses we make of it.

Belatedly, cultural policy makers in the twenty-first century have begun to reconnect creative industries policy and rhetoric with the dominant paradigms in academic discussions of creativity—in particular, the realisation that creativity is essentially a social process and definitions of creativity must take account of the social systems around ‘creative’ individuals, products and processes. ‘Creative consumption’ offers a way of reconnecting individual creativity and social systems, novel ideas with collective value. Alongside other paradigms and perspectives considered in this book, creative consumption in the creative industries offers some alternative answers to an old puzzle, through the gradual maturing of an empty concept into something more provocative and challenging.