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Creation's Unique Managerial Paradigm

Long deemed exotic by the managerial world - both by practitioners and researchers - organizations falling under what are currently known as the creative industries (Caves 2000) have received increasing interest since the beginning of the millennium (Benghozi 1995; Paris and Massé 2021). And for a good reason: while the imperative of innovation was becoming increasingly pressing and increasingly structuring for a growing number of firms (Benghozi et al. 2000), companies which commercialized "creation" seemed to demonstrate notable know-how in their ability to manage different problems related to such imperative: talent management, repeated innovation, disruptive innovation, risk and failure management, etc. To such an extent, in fact, that these companies (which operate in a context known for its significant risk) even seemed to have stifled it, if we think of the major actors in the luxury sector or Pixar.

If they have long seemed exotic, it is because these sectors remain shrouded in a romantic representation, according to which everything boils down to individual genius (Becker 1982). The relentless success of companies relying on anonymous creators, such as Pixar, has challenged this view and evidenced that organization and management could be accountable for their satisfying performance. What's more, this pendulum swing may also have encouraged the emergence of another equally false representation of creation: the mechanistic vision. In this way, we tend to apply reading grids to this activity which end up being unsuitable. What actually happens is that firms thriving in the creative industries rely on organizations and management, but these managerial approaches are part of specific operating modes, which leads us to affirm the existence of a managerial paradigm specific to creation.

This chapter aims to present the characteristics of this paradigm. We do so first by attempting to define the challenges these organizations face. To create, of course! But what does this mean, namely in terms of management difficulties? We thoroughly explore the difficulties and challenges involved in organizing and managing creation. To conclude, we disclose the responses provided by organizations which consistently deploy creative expertise.

1.1. Creation as an organized social activity

"Please. draw me a sheep!": this famous request could be a prompt issued to generative AI. Regardless of whether artificial intelligence is involved or not, the plea richly describes the context of creation, its reality and its challenges in terms of management. The narrator of the Little Prince, an aviator stranded in the desert, might as well retort something like "draw it yourself!", especially considering that the rest of the episode shows how difficult it is to satisfy the little boy. The narrator could even ask for further explanations, insofar as the boy's request is not perfectly explicit. This apostrophe, and the difficulties it brings, signals the entry of the organizational dimension into creation. In this section, we do our best to provide an actionable representation of creation.

1.1.1. Creation: from the romantic myth to organizational reality

Fiat lux and facta est lux! Let there be light, and there was light! It is remarkable that the first sentence spoken by God constitutes an act of creation. The creation of the world unfolded as an immediate act, whereby spirit (the mind of God?) imposes its conception over matter. Now, what is true in the Judeo-Christian cosmogony is also present in other cosmogonies. Among the Hindus, for example, the creation of the world took place in the blink of an eye.

Our societies have long supported a vision of creation similar to this first image. In our representations, creation results from a single, brilliant individual, who creates following an inspiration impossible to harness. The demiurgic dimension we often associate with this activity is found in a form of superiority - genius - creators are allegedly endowed with. It is also evidenced in the inspiration which turns the creator into the expressive vector of a higher force. According to this representation, there is no compromise: the creator creates whatever its genius dictates. There is no organization. As for matter, it is a perfectly malleable object over which the mind imposes a form, without much difficulty. Thus, the pangs of creation come down to material suffering (the genius hardly cares for comfort and is often misunderstood) and to the whims of inspiration. In a seminal book, the sociologist Howard Becker showed how reality differs from this extremely widespread mythology (Becker 1982). We will return to this point.

Let us return to the early days of the world, not from a biblical perspective but an evolutionary one. The discovery of the Chauvet Cave in 1994 taught us that in 36,000 BCE, Paleolithic human beings were already creating. Although dance and pantomime developed in ancient times, some cave paintings seem to indicate that dance existed in prehistoric times. These early forms of artistic expression featured a sense of immediacy, akin to a divine act: nothing and no one stood between the desire to move our body and the execution of the action. Painting requires only - but still - the use of a tool and a material. "Still," because as soon as the act of creation loses its immediacy, it can involve or require collaboration. The thousands of years that followed resulted in the multiplication of creation forms: the creative industries include painting and other plastic arts, drama and dance, music, publishing, cinema, video games, fashion, architecture, design, advertising, cooking, etc. The image of the creator on their own - alone with their body - has become marginalized. No longer is there any creation that does not require tools, materials or teams, and often, all three. Orson Welles pointed out the increasing complexity of the creative tool when he declared: "A writer needs a pen, an artist needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs an army." Previously, Chaplin had been moved by the way in which the emergence of technology was transforming the work of the creator:

Cameras the size of a room lumbered about the stage like Juggernauts. Elaborate radio equipment was installed, involving thousands of electrical wires. Men geared like warriors from Mars, sat with earphones while the actors performed, with microphones hovering above them like fishing rods. It was all very complicated and depressing. How could anyone be creative with all that junk around them? (Chaplin 1964, p. 374)

These successive interjections of material, technological or human intermediaries between creator and production have effectively incorporated organization into creation, or more generally, an organizational arrangement (Girin 1995) bringing together individuals and objects. Just like in the Little Prince, as soon as the creator has to interact with a third party to create, it enters an organizational context. To such an extent, persons categorized as creators define themselves as organizers or managers. Vince Gilligan, showrunner of the Breaking Bad series, declared:

The worst thing the French ever gave us is the auteur theory. It's a load of horseshit. You don't make a movie by yourself, you certainly don't make a TV show by yourself. You invest people in their work. You make people feel comfortable in their jobs; you keep people talking. (Martin 2013)

The production of a series, even the most creative one, is built upon organization, labor division, routines or processes.

Over time, cooperation, technologies, tools and de facto organization have become part of various forms of creation. Today, different forms coexist, and the use of larger or smaller teams or labor division is essential for developing complex projects requiring multiple skills (video games, architecture, etc.) or a significant amount of work (series, animation, etc.) or when a creator or company wishes or needs to do more: bigger, more complex, more often, more numerous or faster. These days, architects can only be considered for the Pritzker Prize, the highest award in the field, provided that they are associated with a sufficiently substantial body of work, which is largely inaccessible to individuals working on their own. Organization, in this case, makes it possible for their work to be multiplied.

This also leads us to identify the three main organizational contexts for creation (Paris 2013). An organization can be built to catapult the vision of an individual and thus present itself as an extension of the said individual: this is the case of architectural firms that bear the name of an architect, such as Jean Nouvel or Renzo Piano; of restaurant groups such as Alain Ducasse or Anne-Sophie Pic; of animation companies such as Studio Ghibli, which established itself as Miyazaki's tool of expression; or in the performing arts, as shown by the troupes of Ariane Mnouchkine (Théâtre du Soleil) or the late Pina Bausch (Tanztheater Wuppertal).

It can be a production tool placed at the service of projects executed by various external creators: see, for example, the Cirque du Soleil, or the animation studio Illumination which is developing the series of animated films Despicable Me. It can finally be a breeding ground in which different creators develop various projects:...