Research on creative organizations often highlights a concern that economic influences on creative work might crowd out aesthetic influences. How this concern can be managed, however, is not well understood. Using a case study of an economic/aesthetic conflict within e-Types, a design firm, we develop theory to describe how the economic and aesthetic can be constructively combined. Building from grounded empirical analysis, we propose the concept of conversation as a way of theorizing about a constructed sociality via which creative firms can manage this conflict. "Converse," according to etymology, means "to live with"; the archaic meaning is "to become occupied or engaged." To say, then, that the economic and aesthetic remained conversant at e-Types through controversy is, we demonstrate, richly descriptive and generative of additional implications. In a similar way, we propose the concept of ensemble -an idea borrowed from the collaborative arts -as a way of theorizing about a conversationally nurtured but fragile form of intensified sociality that is not always achieved, but that most successfully combines conflicting influences when it is. Our findings and theoretical conceptualizations contribute new insights and a framework for organizing a fragmented landscape of ideas about creative work.