Creativity's contribution to economic success

Mar 20 2008 by Dr Andrew Penaluna and Cath Penaluna, Western Mail

WE all know that the nature of business has changed significantly.

Manufacturing and production are no longer the gateways to international success and prowess is increasingly measured in terms of innovation and entrepreneurship. Creativity has become the buzzword in what is frequently described as a “knowledge-based economy”.

This sea change in thinking is being driven through the university sector by the setting up of bodies such as the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship and through Government-led reports such as the 2005 Cox Review of Creativity in Business.

Much of the university sector focus, however, has remained on the business school environment and the application of business skills in other disciplines. The pedagogies associated with these approaches have a tendency to focus on analytical approaches and deconstruction.

There is also a preponderance towards positivistic engagement, where outcomes are clearly defined and by and large quite predictable. Creativity and predictability are an anathema to one another and the dichotomy has highlighted significant challenges to this way of thinking.

An emergent strategy, slowly being recognised at international conferences and in other academic debates, requires us to turn our attention toward those who have the most experience in dealing with creative individuals, namely, departments of art and design.

Specifically, those associated with the design disciplines will immediately recognise the parallels that can be drawn between the entrepreneurship agenda and those already well established in their discipline. Good designers are well versed in taking a client brief and responding to it through challenge and innovation.

Unlike their colleagues in fine art, whose approaches are most likely seen to epitomise what these faculties are about, designers predominantly respond to the needs of others.

What drives them is not a need for personal statement but the solving of problems and the continuous challenge of conflicting ideas and opinions.

As Harvard business guru Amar Bhide describes, “Theirs is a world of ingenuity, spontaneity and hustle.” Bhide’s text, of course, is describing the world of the entrepreneur, but the comparison is easily drawn.

Graphic and advertising designers may be considered a special focus of this debate. They are, in effect, interpreters of business and business needs. When a business wishes to communicate its ambitions or to sell its wares to a target audience where does it turn?

Try to name a business or enterprise that does not employ the services of a design creative in the production of advertisements, brochures, websites or even in the apparent simple dissemination of financial reports to shareholders and stakeholders?

In consequence, designers have to be experts in research; they have to learn about each new client’s business from the ground up. Only then can they seek to purchase some market advantage.

To many business leaders the idea of engaging an art school graduate will remain an uncomfortable concept. Moreover, to many in the university sector who have yet to grasp these changes, the pedagogical challenges appear somewhat significant and potentially daunting.

The indicators, however, are already gaining in visibility and prominence. For example, the UK’s Higher Education Academy provides “subject- specific support for enhancing the student learning experience”.

Its Subject Centre for Business Management, Accountancy and Finance has recently set up a UK-wide special interest group based at Swansea Metropolitan University.

The group’s chair is from the university’s Faculty of Art and Design. Moreover, just three weeks ago at the launch of Creative Britain: New Talents for the New Economy, Culture Secretary Andy Burnham stated, “The creative industries must move from the margins to the mainstream of economic and policy thinking, as we look to create the jobs of the future.”

Statistically, we can consider the fact that in 2005 £60bn, or 7.3% of the UK’s Gross Value Added can be attributed to the creative industries.

Moreover, at 6% per annum, the creative industries grew at twice the rate of the rest of the economy between 1997 and 2005.

Various international studies have indicated that the UK is at or near the top of the game as far as the creative industries are concerned. This offers us a clear and competitive advantage if we can move our universities to act swiftly enough.

Dr Andrew Penaluna is Programme Director for Design for Advertising and Kath Penaluna is Enterprise Manager at Swansea Metropolitan University