The aim of this contribution is to depict and analyze the dynamics of situated creativity by presenting an anatomy of the creative city and an understanding of the emergence and formation of creative processes in these particular local ecologies of knowledge. We propose to study the anatomy of the creative city by defining three different layers—the upperground, the middleground and the underground—as the basic components of the creative processes in local innovative milieus. Each one of these layers intervenes with specific characteristics in the creative process, and enables new knowledge to transit from an informal micro-level to a formal macro-level. In order to illustrate this point of view, the creative city of Montréal is analyzed through two main case studies: Ubisoft and the Cirque du Soleil.Creative cities, communities, upperground, underground, middleground,
SummaryThis contribution illustrates how a videogame firm copes in managing creativity and expression of artistic values, while meeting the constraints of the economics of mass entertainment. The research is based on a case study in one of the largest video game studios in the world located in Montreal, Canada. The approach considers that the creative units of the firms are the communities of specialists (game developers, software programmers, etc.). Each of these communities, which have found a fertile soil in Montreal that nurtures their creative potential, is focused on both exploration and exploitation of a given domain of knowledge. In order to benefit from these sources of creativity, the integration forces implemented by the managers of the firm to bind the creative units together for achieving commercial successes reveal a hybrid form of project management which combines decentralized platforms with strict constraints on time, and a specific management of space that favors informal interactions. However, we suggest that the integration forces put forward by the firm are not just for harnessing creative units: they also generate creative slacks for further expansion of creativity.
In this paper we address two problems related to what can be claimed about the powers of decentralised business networks. The first concerns the role of tacit knowledge and proximity in securing competitive advantage. Recently, in a strand of the literature concerned with the differences between tacit and codified knowledge, it has begun to be claimed that the superiority of relational and geographic proximity (for example, intense face-to-face contact, local industrial clusters, and districts) over formally constituted and distantiated networks of knowledge and learning. In the first part of the paper we dissent from this interpretation by questioning the separability of the two forms of knowledge and by suggesting that business networks largely dependent on local tacit knowledge and incremental learning may prove to be inadaptable in the face of radical shifts in markets and technologies. The second problem regards the relationship between knowledge and the organisational structure of firms and business networks. In the second half of the paper we focus on the challenge facing competence-based large firms which draw on localised sources of knowledge to argue that competitive advantage is crucially influenced by the ability of firms to mobilise and integrate diversified forms of knowledge (tacit and codified), rather than to specialise in one form. We also argue that the imperative to sustain continuous learning is adding a new architecture of organisation and governance to that traditionally associated with the reduction of transaction costs, rather than replacing it, as is implied in the new literature which privileges the firm as a nexus of competencies. Thus, a dual structure seems to be emerging, which is composed of a decentralised network of reflexive and interactive centres to advance core competencies and learning and overlaid upon a more traditional hierarchical structure for the regulation of noncore activities.
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