Artists Innovate, Businesses Catch On
Posted on September 27, 2007
Filed Under What's New |
This is another piece I wrote for Innovation magazine. I’m trying to integrate it into Chapter 1 of the book.
In the Donostia area of San Sebastian in the Basque region of Spain staff at the Disonancias Art, R&D and Innovation project are getting ready to launch their third annual international call for artists. Calls for artists are common enough for fine art exhibitions. These artists though must be interested in cooperating with the research, development and innovation departments of Basque companies.
“The main objective is to find new ways to innovate,” explains project leader Arantxa Mendiharat. Here is the artist as chief industrial innovator. Increasingly companies are turning not to consultants for insights into new working techniques, products or concepts but to the only profession that innovates out of habit.
Now in its third year the Disonancias project has attracted artists from all over the world including Saoirse Higgins from Ireland, who worked with the European Virtual Engineering Centre, and artists from Australia, New York, and Sweden. In last year’s programme only one of the 10 artists chosen to work in Spanish organisations came from Spain.
The idea of introducing artists into the corporate innovation process is catching on. In Ireland Dublin-based Business2Arts, which to date been a mediator of business sponsorship of the arts, has begun targeting the more practical use of artists in a corporate setting.
“The old fashioned model of art and business interaction was sponsorship,” explains CEO Stuart McLaughlin, “or business as a patron of the arts. We are starting to work with organisations where artists can engage in strategic challenges.”
The issues that artists are helping companies to address are broad ranging and don’t necessarily focus on creativity as a missing or underdeveloped part of the organisational process. The projects, in other words, are not limited to the obvious.
In this year’s Disonancias programme the engineering company Lanik is looking for an artist to help its staff understand the changing landscape of architectural practice, particularly concepts such as transformable architecture. The hope is that an artist can interpret this concept in new ways and provide Lanik with insights into how it will affect the products and services the company offers to architects as well as provide a novel concept or two that the company can develop for their portfolio.
McLaughlin gives the example of the consultancy Accenture which has grown rapidly from 200 to 1500 employees in Dublin. Growth created distance and disaffection. Corporate values handed down from the company’s Chicago headquarters didn’t necessarily inspire the employees in the Dublin office. McLaughlin hired an arts Director from the UK who then commissioned a range of arts projects to help draw out employee values.
“One installation we did at Accenture was called: What Makes You Cry? Managers could sit around for 10 years without thinking of asking that question. But when you ask that kind of question you see there is a relationship between people and an organisation and that it can be rediscovered, from the ground up,” says McLaughlin
In the Accenture project the role of art was to help the company build a truer identity that is now being used in the company’s distinct Irish communications’ strategy.
Both Arantxa Mendiharat and McLaughlin stress the process is novel to companies but also to artists. “It is a different definition of art,” says Mendiharat, “more to do with thinking the world rather than thinking an object.”
McLaughlin has a slightly different take. “First it’s brave of a company to go this route but you need also to find artists who are comfortable in a business setting and not many of them are. You need to help artists understand they have a value.”
An upcoming project for Business2arts is to take IT project managers into a theatre setting. On the face of it the objective is to have professional project managers assist the theatre as part of a corporate outreach programme. But the underlying motive is to show managers how creative people manage projects on minimal resources and deliver their project night after night.
The artist is beginning to displace those organisations such as consultancies that would previously have been the first port of call for a company seeking external inspiration.
“Businesses are saying we’re stuck and we need a different way of thinking,” says McLaughlin who also points out that managers are judged by their ability to deliver on day to day tasks. That attention to routine can kill creativity. Disonancias is about to work with French artist Francois Deck to help redefine organisational processes in creative ways and Business2Arts has its sights on a wider role for artists across industry and commerce.
“Some of the people who work in creative industry, for example advertising, haven’t had to be that creative,” argues McLaughlin, “particularly in a growing economy. They deal in variations on a theme. Once ideas are there it becomes easier. Artists are the ones who work in ideas.”
Remarkably even though this is not a role the arts administrators or artists have sought out, it looks as though artists have the opportunity to redraw the rules of business with themselves somewhere near the centre, symbolising the relentless rise of the nascent creative economy.
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Hello Haydn!
we would really appreciate to know what you think about the first European Social Network with a social agenda. http://www.mypacis.eu/ has been released this week, and your opinion as expert blogger can make a difference!
Which kind of impact can a Social Network have on European peace, stability, co-operation and policies? Can we make a difference by expressing our opinions online, in a hub where they can benefit from critical mass?
If you support this project, it would be great if you decide to blog about MyPacis.eu. Below, we enclose a press-release with some more information.
If you have any question, I am happy to answer! By providing your opinion and blogging about MyPacis.eu, you can already make a difference!
THANKS!
frank
—– European Social Network: MyPacis.eu —–
A European Social Network with a social agenda has been officially released this week: http://www.mypacis.eu/ mission is to promote peace, sustainable development, co-operation and enlargement by linking Europeans together.
MyPacis.eu is different from other social networks: it is made by Europeans for other Europeans. Compared to existing social networks in Europe, it has been designed to be easily localized in every European language, instead of focusing on one or two national markets.
MyPacis.eu uses Web 2.0 tools which are very attractive for younger generations, but still accessible to more mature ones. Users can choose their level of involvement in the community: from browsing users, just watching pictures, videos and news; to active participants in the discussion about European Union enlargement and other European opportunities, sharing stories, posting opinions and creating groups of interests.
Younger generations are the ones who will affected the most by changes in Europe. A social network is an effective media to reach them. Now, Europeans can get to know each other better, keep in touch with friends met offline and get informed using a familiar media. Several other projects are in the pipeline, including mobile social network http://www.mypacis.mobi . Also, a free, open source and multilingual suite of web-publishing tools will be released, allowing every Internet user (even without IT skills), to create communities and foster freedom of speech all around Europe, especially where it is needed the most.
ABOUT MYPACIS.EU
http://www.mypacis.eu/ is a European Social Network with a social agenda: promoting peace by linking Europeans together. It is an open source, integrated and multilingual social network, developed using Web 2.0 tools with a European prospective.
Hi Frank - sorry to be slow getting back to you. I did take a look and thought great idea. It needs developing on a bit as a community so let me know when you’d like me to visit again and I’ll see if I can interest the Irish Times in it.