Creativity on Demand
The Dilemmas of Innovation in an Accelerated Age
- Contents
- Review Quotes
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Ubiquity and Ambiguity of Routinized Business Innovation
1 Robinson Crusoe in Manhattan: Planned Accidents Are Good to Innovate With
2 “Putting This Mess into a Structure”: Cultural Contradictions and Discursive Resolutions
3 “Listening to the Voice of the Product”: Human Creativity Displaced
4 The Post-it Note Economy: Understanding Post-Fordist Business Innovation
5 Clutter: Unpacking the Stuff of Business Innovation
6 “Life Design”: The Omnivorous Logic of Business Innovation
Conclusion: Institutional Myths of Innovation
Notes
List of References
Index
Introduction: The Ubiquity and Ambiguity of Routinized Business Innovation
1 Robinson Crusoe in Manhattan: Planned Accidents Are Good to Innovate With
2 “Putting This Mess into a Structure”: Cultural Contradictions and Discursive Resolutions
3 “Listening to the Voice of the Product”: Human Creativity Displaced
4 The Post-it Note Economy: Understanding Post-Fordist Business Innovation
5 Clutter: Unpacking the Stuff of Business Innovation
6 “Life Design”: The Omnivorous Logic of Business Innovation
Conclusion: Institutional Myths of Innovation
Notes
List of References
Index
Review Quotes
CHOICE
"Wilf opens the vast world of innovation consulting in today's capitalism to anthropological analysis. Rather than simply repeat, for instance, the common story of how 3M accidentally invented the wildly successful Post-it Note, Wilf explores a world in which consulting firms use the Post-it example, along with dozens of actual Post-its of various shapes and sizes, in their attempts to foster intentional, routine creativity among their corporate clients. By carefully unpacking workshop interactions, how-to guides, and much more, Wilf shows that innovation consulting has become a central cultural logic of contemporary capitalism, a practice that firms often believe they cannot survive without, even as they just as often doubt its efficacy. While the analysis is sophisticated throughout, ranging widely through theories of cultural change, commodity fetishism, language practices, and more, the main points will be quite understandable to less theoretically inclined readers interested in the actual practice (as opposed to insistent ideologies) of 21st-century capitalism. Creativity on Demand is a useful addition to scholarship and courses in a number of fields beyond anthropology, including design, management, and political economy."
Don Brenneis, University of California, Santa Cruz
“Attentive, engaging, and highly innovative, Creativity on Demand brings an acute ethnographic sensibility to bear on the making of the ‘new’ in contemporary corporate life, showing us, in the process, how anthropology can help us better understand our present-day condition. This is a singularly thought-provoking read.”
Keith Murphy, University of California, Irvine
“I’ve been waiting for years for a book like this to come along. Using an approach that neither celebrates innovation nor dismisses it, Creativity on Demand is the first extended critical exploration of a concept with a lot of social force behind it, but—until now—not much ethnographic light illuminating its inner workings. Anyone interested in the political economy of operationalized creativity will find something to run with in this book.”
Andrew Orta, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“Creativity on Demand shines an ethnographic light on the ceaseless production of newness as a quality of contemporary ‘fast’ capitalism. Wilf’s work with innovation consultants is an important contribution to anthropological and other critical studies of business.”
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Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology
Sociology: Occupations, Professions, Work | Theory and Sociology of Knowledge
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