Creativity on Demand

The Dilemmas of Innovation in an Accelerated Age

Eitan Y. Wilf

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780226606972, 9780226606835
• eBook ISBN: 9780226607023
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Social Sciences

Business consultants everywhere preach the benefits of innovation—and promise to help businesses reap them. A trendy industry, this type of consulting generates courses, workshops, books, and conferences that all claim to hold the secrets of success. But what promises does the notion of innovation entail? What is it about the ideology and practice of business innovation that has made these firms so successful at selling their services to everyone from small start-ups to Fortune 500 companies? And most important, what does business innovation actually mean for work and our economy today?
 
In Creativity on Demand, cultural anthropologist Eitan Wilf seeks to answer these questions by returning to the fundamental and pervasive expectation of continual innovation. Wilf focuses a keen eye on how our obsession with ceaseless innovation stems from the long-standing value of acceleration in capitalist society. Based on ethnographic work with innovation consultants in the United States, he reveals, among other surprises, how routine the culture of innovation actually is. Procedures and strategies are repeated in a formulaic way, and imagination is harnessed as a new professional ethos, not always to generate genuinely new thinking, but to produce predictable signs of continual change. A masterful look at the contradictions of our capitalist age, Creativity on Demand is a model for the anthropological study of our cultures of work.
 

INDEX

Italicized page numbers refer to illustrations.

abduction, 14–15, 45−49, 177

Academy of Management, 23

accidents, 28−34, 38−43, 46, 53

actor-network theory, 193−94n5

advertising, 75, 86−88, 94, 192n10, 196n9

aesthetics, 185

Airbus, 181

Akrich, Madeleine, 197n2

Anderson, Douglas R., 46

Anderson, Ken, 193n2

anthropology, knowledge production in, 183−87, 197−98nn3−6

Apollo 13 (film), 50−51, 52

Apple, 59, 161−62, 196n4

architecture, 33, 45, 161

Aristotle, 82−83, 186

artifacts of innovation practice: aesthetic of, 125; clutter and, 124−25, 140−41, 144−46; diagrams and, 113, 115−16, 118, 194n8; distributed at workshops, 133−34, 136−37; graphic ideology and, 139, 195n6; life design and, 155−57, 158−59, 160, 168−69, 174; method cards and, 134, 136−38; office design and, 124; old office spaces and, 130−32, 131−32, 141, 142−43; pragmatic ambiguity and, 178; reasoning and, 185; reflexive mediation and, 128; self-tracking technologies and, 170−71; technical mystique and, 126, 133. See also Post-it notes

artificial intelligence, 140

Barrett, Frank, 24−25

Bateson, Gregory, 185

Benedict, Ruth, 185

Berklee College of Music, 196n5

Bernbach, William, 75

Boas, Franz, 34, 185

Boeing, 181

Bourdieu, Pierre, 185

Brahe, Tycho, 119

brainstorming: vs. Brandnew’s Method, 55, 56−57, 57−58, 62−64, 85−86, 190n5; design thinking and, 10, 11, 128, 189n3; diagrams of, 55, 56−57, 62−63; origins of, 58; popularity of, 138; Post-it notes and, 102−3, 122, 138−39, 195n5; prototyping life designs and, 168−69; skepticism about, 85−86; storm trope and, 190n6; unintended functions of, 86

branding, 80, 193n4

Brandnew (fieldwork site): author’s first encounter with, 189n5; brainstorming rejected by, 190n5; breaking cognitive fixedness and, 37; clientele of, 11; conservative approach to creativity and, 88; creation of hypothetical service and, 39−43; design thinking rejected by, 101, 189n5; founding of, 10, 191n7; origins of, 65−67; products as quasi persons and, 149; proprietary innovation strategies and, 11, 14−16; services of, 10−11; structured contingency and, 32−33. See also Brandnew’s Method; Brandnew’s workshops

Brandnew’s Method: accidents in, 28−34, 38−39; alternative functions for existing objects and, 66; artifacts of innovation practice and, 133−34; associations in innovators’ brains and, 96−97; vs. brainstorming, 55, 56−57, 57−58, 62−64, 85−86; bricolage and, 49−54; clear alg...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgments
• INTRODUCTION  /  The Ubiquity and Ambiguity of Routinized Business Innovation
• ONE  /  Robinson Crusoe in Manhattan: Planned Accidents Are Good to Innovate With
• TWO  /  “Putting This Mess into a Structure”: Cultural Contradictions and Discursive Resolutions
• THREE  /  “Listening to the Voice of the Product”: Human Creativity Displaced
• FOUR  /  The Post-it Note Economy: Understanding Post-Fordist Business Innovation
• FIVE  /  Clutter: Unpacking the Stuff of Business Innovation
• SIX  /  “Life Design”: The Omnivorous Logic of Business Innovation
• CONCLUSION  /  Institutional Myths of Innovation
• Notes
• List of References
• Index