Creativity and socio‐economic development: space for the interests of publics

Abstract

Emphasising power in strategic choice, we consider people in actual and potential publics kindling their imagination and ideas in order to shape new directions in the economies in which they have an interest. This paper proposes ‘public creativity forums’, spaces defined by relations aimed at free communication and based upon shared values, including openness. Artistic activities are highlighted as a viaticum for people’s creativity, hence for their potential significance in influencing development in any sector or region. The case of self‐styled Mutoids is presented following original ethnographic research. These prospects are positioned in an analysis of transnational corporations, uneven economic development, choices over globalisation and regional competitiveness.

Keywords:

• creative space
• artistic activities
• strategic choice
• public interests
• Mutoids
• ethnography

JEL Classifications:

• Z10
• O10
• R10
• P00

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank J. Robert Branston, Erika Cellini, Keith Cowling, Julian R. Locke, Francesco N. Moro and James R. Wilson for comments and discussion on various aspects of the analysis. Thanks also to participants at the Ideas Laboratory of the International Festival on Creativity and Economic Development at Gambettola, Italy in May 2007, where parts of the paper were discussed. The usual disclaimers apply.

Notes

1. Zeitlin (1974) argues that the power to govern (in other words, to control) a large corporation equates to the power to make the strategic decisions that determine its broad direction; these include decisions about its relationships with other corporations, with governments and with employees, and about its geographical orientation. More recently, this analysis has been used as a foundation for the so‐called strategic choice framework, deploying a governance lens to view the activities of transnational corporations, networks and other forms of economic organisation, and to view regional, national and indeed global economies.

2. See, amongst others, Hymer (1972) on uneven development; Cowling and Sugden (1998b) on strategic international trade; Cowling and Tomlinson (2000) on Japan.

3. See, for example, Cowling and Sugden (1999) on multinational webs; Sacchetti and Sugden (2003) on network forms; Sacchetti (2004) on knowledge; Branston, Cowling and Sugden (2006a) on the public interest.

4. See Scott (2004) for a detailed discussion of different perspectives in economic geography.

5. This perspective has strong ties with Penrose (1952, 818): ‘there is considerable evidence that … many decisions are reached after a conscious consideration of alternatives, and that men have a wide range of genuine choices’.

6. The applicability of this perspective across countries and legal jurisdictions is implicitly addressed in a growing literature on convergence in corporate governance. See, for example, Wojcik (2006), examining practice across Europe and finding evidence of convergence to an Anglo‐US model.

7. For an illustration, see Fold’s (2001) aforementioned analysis of the World Bank and IMF‐backed structural adjustment programmes in West Africa.

8. Compare Branston et al. (2006b), offering the prospect of a conceptualisation of competitiveness that is much broader, albeit not arguing that such a broad approach is currently pursued in practice.

9. Using the terminology of Scott (2006, 3), a public creativity forum can be viewed as a specific type of ‘creative field’, a notion that ‘can be used to describe any system of social relationships that shapes or influences human ingenuity and inventiveness and that is the site of concomitant innovations’.

10. See also Dicken et al. (2001) on multiple scales in the global economy.

11. Support for this assertion might come from artists themselves: amongst others, for Wordsworth (1802, quoted in Knowles 1999, 832) ‘poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge’; for Cartier‐Bresson (1952, quoted in Knowles, 1999, 193) ‘photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organisation of forms which give that event its proper expression’; for de Mille (1975, quoted in Knowles 1999, 257) ‘the truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music’.

12. Consider, for example, Caves (2000) on the geography of creativity; Neff (2005) on the digital media industry in New York; Leslie and Rantisi (2006) on urban economic development and the interplay between ‘economic’ and ‘cultural’ factors in Montreal’s design economy; Currid (2007) on why artists and the ‘creative class’ tend to locate in big cultural hubs such as New York.

13. Having recognised this, however, we would not suggest that it is necessarily desirable to free artistic activities from all and any ethical constraints. In particular, it might be argued that human and other species have inalienable rights.

14. Francesco Sacchetti.

15. On the relation between science and society, and most notably on aspects of what sustained interaction would entail, see the discussion of regional science in Barnes (2004), whose approach has overlaps with the more general analysis of networks in Dicken et al (2001).