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Culture as innovation - Turku Conference 2007

Already in 2007 at the ECCM Symposium 'Productivity of Culture' certain topics for further going research were known through a planned conference in Turku on following topic:

 

CULTURE AS INNOVATION - THE SEARCH FOR CREATIVE POWER IN ECONOMIES AND SOCIETIES

Culture is contradictory: It is individual and creative, it is collective and empowering. It is also diverse, conservative and restrictive. If we reflect upon such contradictions and develop that perspective we raise the questions: what is the future of the creative economy, the cultural industry, economic innovation and the interaction of culture and the economy? Furthermore, what consequences and challenges do such questions hold for the development of society?

The aim of the conference is to think and discuss about these questions under the following wider themes:

The conference will bring together people from universities, research institutes, companies, regional authorities, public sector, governmental and non-governmental organisations. The idea is to meet, share and discuss new ideas concerning culture, the creative economy and innovativeness. The aim is to generate multidisciplinary, lively and productive discussions and promote networking between people from different backgrounds in the arts, business, culture and science.

 

HOW TO UNDERSTAND CULTURE AND DESIGN IN ECONOMY?
Pekka Ylä-Anttila, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy, Finland

In economics and management literature the notion of intangible capital as source of growth and competitive advantage has increasingly gained attention. R&D, design, and relational and structural capital are seen as factors explaining company performance as much as investment in tangible assets. Relational capital includes customer and supplier relations and has a strong cultural dimension especially in the case multinational companies.

The presentation focuses on design as an important element of intangible capital. There is a growing number of empirical studies looking at the contribution of design input to firm performance. Results generally indicate that companies with intensive investments in design have succeeded better than less intensive and non-user companies. They also show that firms that invest in design tend to be more innovative than firms that spend little in design. As a matter of fact, it is the combination of investment in design and R&D that spurs innovation. Some recent studies show that investments in design affect significantly anticipated future sales, and hence the market valuation of companies.

LIBERTY – RESPONSIBILITY – BENEFITS? ETHICAL DIMENSIONS OF INNOVATIONS AND CREATIVE PRODUCTION
Hannele Koivunen, Arts and Cultural Heritage Division, Ministry of Education, Finland

Minister of Culture initiated in 2005 a project exploring the ethical dimensions of cultural policy, starting with cultural rights, and of outlining directions and tools for ethical evaluation of cultural policy. The publication Fair Culture? (Hannele Koivunen & Leena Marsio) was published in 2006. The report seeks to analyse the ethical focuses in cultural policy discourse. The analysis of human and fundamental rights intend to outline cultural policy ethics.

The concept of Fair culture means the realisation of people’s cultural rights and inclusion in cultural signification, or fair deals in creative production.

There are conflicting interests and interpretations on ethical premises of cultural policy. The value of art and culture can be derived from the intrinsic value and high quality of art or from the benefits of art and culture for the individual and for the community. During the recent decades the instrumentality and economic applications of art have been to the fore, whereas the sphere of the autonomy and intrinsic value of art has been receding.

Cultural policy choices take different guises depending on whether the ethical justification is derived from virtue ethic, responsibility ethic or corollary ethic. Ethical choices vary according to whether the emphasis in the justification is on freedom, right or benefit ethos. None of these choices is "more ethical" or "more valuable" than the others. The aim of ethical assessment in cultural politics could primarily be to make these choices visible.

CREATIVE INDUSTRIES AND THE CREATIVE CITY
Justin O’Connor, School of Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds, UK

The presentation begins with a brief overview of the concept of cultural industries and what the significance might be of the change to 'creative industries'.

Creative industries and the city they operate in are interdependent of one another. Yet there is the question to be asked why cultural or creative industries are associated with the city and what can the city add to such clusters of economic and cultural activity? Should the cities enhance and support such clusters and if so, what kind of changes does it have to undergo to do this. In the presentation it will be argued that such support that the cities should offer to creative clusters involves a longer term change in the vision of the city and the decision making networks which make up its urban governance.

CULTURAL VITALITY AS PRIVILEDGE AND OBLIGATION OF DESIGN MANAGEMENT
Laura Lares, Kalevala Jewelry Oy & Lapponia Jewelry Oy, Finland

When being fully dependent on viable and renewable design management, a business enterprise can significantly enjoy from its rich and versatile cultural intercommunication. With strong cultural background, a design company has natural and distinctive competencies relevant and sustainable for both ethical and commercial growth.

In some designs, actual cultural heritage from earlier millenia is revived and brought into today’s use. Various museum collections, literature, opera and nature are actively used as sources for inspiration, while the dialogue of national and universal themes and motives enriches the development of the design community. New jewelry collections, on the other hand, offer challenges and opportunities for bold and artistically ambitious modern design for an extensive international audience. When the whole branding and design management is based on genuine interest in art and artists, the cultural argumentation penetrates all business strategies from market positioning and product development to actual sales and marketing.

When providing apprenticeship, work and career opportunities for generations of handicraftsmen and artists, a design company bears a major responsibility in ensuring the survival and progress of certain professions. By supporting the projects concerning other art forms, as well as facilitating a professional route from an experienced goldsmith to designer, this responsibility is taken further. In a company, owned by an association committed to preserve culture and traditions, it is natural to donate some revenues to be granted through Cultural Foundation as well as for certain charity purposes.

In design companies, cultivating and re-inventing authentic cultural interaction is no luxury but prerequisite for the future - as well as a major organisational and individual privilege.

THE FRACTAL FUTURE OF INNOVATIVE SPACES
Alex Soonjung-Kim Pang, Institute for the Future, USA

Innovation used to be simple. It was driven by basic research, and was associated with places like Xerox PARC, Bell Labs, and universities, and ended with products on shelves. Today, we're witnessing a vast range of new experiments in creating spaces that promote innovation. The aim of my talk will be to survey these current efforts, and then to discuss some of the trends that will affect future experiments in supporting innovation.

My survey of current efforts highlights two aspects of these new spaces. First, despite prognostications that the Internet would cast knowledge work free of the constraints of geography, they're still physical places. Second, recent efforts to create new innovative spaces have a notably fractal quality: the same design principles and logic guide the design of online collaboratories, physical laboratories, buildings, and research centers.

My discussion of the future will focus on three trends. The first is the increasing globalization of innovation. Not only will China and India rival Western powers as centers of research and innovation in the future, but small countries will be able to pursue world-class research in niche areas. The second is the growing role of users and user communities in product development and innovation in areas as different as medical instrumentation, music, and sports. Third is a dawning recognition of the close historical relationship between manufacturing and innovation, which challenges the assumption that high-value design and product development can be separated from manufacturing.

I'll conclude my talk by briefly describing a couple scenarios illustrating how these different trends may play out in the future, and how they'll affect the location and culture of innovation.

WORKSHOP 1: Creative Knowledge Capital

Thursday 7 June at 14.30-16.30
Chair: Markku Wilenius

 

How a Firm’s Renewal Capability Can Be Measured, Described and Valued
Pirjo Ståhle (Finland Futures Research Centre, Turku School of Economics, Finland) & Jaana Junell (Nokia Siemens Networks)

It is widely agreed that organizational ability for constant renewal and innovation is one of the main success factors in the knowledge economy. However, even though there are several relatively consolidated theories about the composition of intellectual capital, there is relatively little knowledge about the dynamic processes by which intellectual capital is maintained and created in organizations, as well as to what extent a company’s  intellectual capital has effect on the its economical success. In this paper, we present both a theoretical model for organizational renewal capability (Dynamic Intellectual Capital), and a tool for its measurement (KM-factor®).

As effective management requires measurement, it is highly important to be able to quantify organizational capability for constant renewal. At the moment, most of the research on renewal capability is based on case studies, and there is a lack of quantitative measures that would enable inter-firm comparison and external communication of this capability.

In this paper we a) define renewal capability as an organization’s systemic ability to create and maintain different knowledge environments in line with the firm’s strategic intent, b) demonstrate how renewal capability can be operationalized and measured, and c) how renewal capability prospects company’s future success. The approach is based on systems thinking, knowledge-based theory of the firm and dynamic capability approach, and it also relates to intellectual capital literature. Over 200 organizations have been measured by KM-factor®, and the mathematic analysis of the method has been tested by financial knowledge base of 12000 companies.

Societies’ Features and the Nature of Entrepreneurship
Tero Vuorinen (Department of Management & Organizations,
University of Vaasa, Finland)

This paper is focusing on entrepreneurial challenges in homogenous and heterogeneous societies. In this paper the examples of such homogenous countries are the Nordic countries, especially Finland, which could be compared with relatively different society; in this case USA. This paper is theoretical and it is mainly based on the Austrian view of entrepreneurship (e.g. Kirzner 1973; 1979; 1986; 1992; 1997) and the ideas of reflexive sociology (e.g. Bourdieu & Wacquant 1995). The main issue in this paper is: How do the principles of entrepreneurship change, when the society is fairly homogenous when considering e.g. income, wealth, education, religion, race, experiences and values. Furthermore, how should this been taken into account when considering the societal and economical development? The incentives and paths to entrepreneurship and the effects of the entrepreneurship as well might be varying strongly in accordance with societies’ features. Too homogenous society could be compared with closed economy where the internal processes might be very well functioning, but the direction of the efforts might be wrong. That issue becomes more important when considering the accelerating pace of technological and economical changes and the nature of the business opportunities they provide. The challenges of the more dynamic environment are hard to approach with the principles of neoclassical economics, instead, more potential aid to analyze the dynamics of the economy and the entrepreneurial society is the Austrian entrepreneurship concept. It emphasizes the role of perception and dynamic of the entrepreneurial process.

Linking a Foresight Perspective to Innovation Processes in KIBS
Mari Holopainen (Innovation Management Institute IMI, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland)

This paper introduces an ongoing study which explores innovations and foresight in knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS). The concept of KIBS refers to expert companies that provide information and knowledge services to other organizations (Miles, 2003). The first aim of the study is to discuss characteristics of innovation processes in the context of KIBS. Even the identification of the existence of innovations is often challenging in services, and the ways in which the innovation processes are organized in service companies is a fairly new research topic (Sundbo, 1997). The second objective is to integrate a foresight perspective in the study of innovation. The focus is on the scanning of environment including the detection of weak signals as a source for innovation. Weak signals can be defined as first symptoms of possible change in the future (Ansoff, 1984). Even though foresight is interlinked with innovation, (Martin & Johnston, 1999) this relation has not been broadly examined.

The empirical part of the study is an ethnographic case study focusing on the level of an individual innovation process in a Finnish architects’ office. Typical for KIBS, the case company does not have a separate R&D department or other specific team specialized for innovation process (cf. Preissl, 2000). On the contrary, the successful innovation process is dependant on the efforts and the potential of the whole organization (Sundbo, 1997). Especially in the case of service innovations, informational and cognitive inputs and learning processes are essential (Toivonen, 2004). Personal abilities and the organization’s support to observe changes occurring in the business environment can even become crucial for success. This study was started in November 2006 and it will continue until September 2007. It is a part of a larger project examining knowledge-intensive business service innovations and innovation networks.

WORKSHOP 2: Diversifying Culture

Thursday 7 June at 14.30-16.30
Chair: Minna Mikkola


THE CREATIVITY AND INNOVATIVENESS IN THE CARE FARM ACTIVITIES
Anna Kirveennummi & Katariina Heikkilä (Finland Futures Research Centre, Turku School of Economics, Finland)

The paper is based on ideas from a practical project around the phenomena of the care farms. “Care farm “, “green care” and “social farming” are new and innovative concepts in whole Europe. They all refer to the utilisation of agricultural resources – the animals, the plants, the garden, the forest and the daily practices at the farmhouse – as a base for promoting human mental and physical health, as well as the quality of life, for a variety of client groups.

In this context we will focus on the creative contents of the care farm practices. Out theoretical starting point comes from the socio-cultural discussions about the meanings of place and environment and about their capacity to function as “raw material” for the creativity of individuals (customers, entrepreneurs etc.). The second theoretical basis comes from futures studies: as the care farm activities in Finland are merely signals of new ideas about to break through, it is important to emphasize the possibilities and obstacles of the care farm activities for future creativity and well-being. We will discuss the socio-cultural aspects of the innovations modifying Rolf Jensen’s ideas about the dreams and imagination as different market powers.

The aim of the project is to describe the core business ideas and to identify the special weaknesses as well as the potentials of the enterprises. Our research team constitutes of multidisciplinary scientists from two organizations (Finland Futures Research Centre & MTT Agrifood Research Finland). The future-oriented socio-cultural part of the study involves participatory methods (future workshops) where ideas and knowledge are reflected and created in different contexts. As the main concepts come from the developers, it is important to start new discussions and processes where the participants own ideas could lead to more concrete innovations, networks and action => new economy based on the individual creativity.

No More Innovativeness & Competitiveness Regimes
but Cultural Diversity!
Tarja Ketola (University of Vaasa and Turku School of Economics, Finland)

Seven of the FFRC's 2006 conference presentations were chosen for a positioning theory analysis (Kyyrönen 2006). The seven persons whose presentations were included in this research were Minister of Regional and Municipal Affairs of Finland, Board Member of the Bank of Finland, an American CEO, professors from the USA, Ireland and the Netherlands – and I.

The study showed that two of the main concepts emerging from these presentations were 'innovativeness' and 'competitiveness'. Six of the seven presentations talked about innovativeness and five of them about competitiveness. You guessed right: I was not among them. The other presenter, who didn't mention competitiveness, was Stuart Rose, CEO of Garden Atriums, with his sustainable life worldview.

Political, economic and scientific innovativeness & competitiveness regimes do not make individuals or organizations innovative or competitive (despite Ståhle and Wilenius 2006). Such regimes do not enhance creativity, which is an innate characteristic of individuals and flourishes in organizations that truly value diversity. Particularly in multicultural contexts (like these FFRC conferences) cultural diversity is a key issue. It relates to one of the cultural know-how forms Wilenius (2004) introduced: how to read both our own culture and other cultures, and use this know-how to further valued causes.

The cause I wish to further is such qualitative sustainable development that improves the wellbeing of people and nature all over the world. While competitiveness goals are harmful to this cooperative cause, practical innovations, like those introduced by Rose, could be achieved through cultural diversity. This paper shows how.

If "History is the Lie That They Teach You in School", What Can We Do?
Marjut Haussila

The nexus of different economies of thought and praxis are discussed adhering to one of the most fluid and versatile examples of hybride culture, African diaspora music.  The presenter adheres to her own experience as a music educator - a keykeeper at the threshold of cultures and knowledges - studying possible spaces for new understandings with regard to knowledge and learning. A sample case of collaboration between Finnish music students and a South African hiphop artist from Johannesburg is discussed as an example of an encounter, in which worlds and cultures meet, as same and different, for the purpose of innovation and tradition.

Creativity as Repositioning: Sustainability Agency
in Municipal Services
Minna Mikkola (Ruralia-institute, University of Helsinki, Finland)

This paper aims at identifying and analysing creativity for sustainability in very mundane and regulated contexts of the public catering organisations. In these contexts, every-day creativity comes close to discovering how to implement combinations of different interests, both concrete and abstract, local and distant as well as human and non-human. The creativity within catering organisations is understood here as approaches developed for socio-economic and environmental aspects of sustainability and the solutions found in combining and realising these in catering activities.

The paper presents case studies, whereby several European public catering organisations are compared by analysing their approaches for socio-economic and environmental aspects of sustainability and the societal tasks adopted. Theoretical background of the study is inspired by Luhmann, who presents society as isolated from but dependent on the environment, needing ecological communication between the subsystems of policy, economy, law, science and education, and creation of ways to adapt for sustainability. The communication, reflecting these subsystems, takes place on the microsociological level of catering organisations. This communication and organisational tasks are examined following principles of realist discourse analysis.

The results reveal, that catering organisations are looking for new kinds of approaches for socio-economic and environmental aspects of sustainability. These approaches can be categorised as local and cultural, environmental, technical, juridical, social and economic. The particular sustainability agency is implemented by combining different approaches for sustainability. The catering organisations are starting to redefine and reposition themselves within their network as sustainability agents, and some advanced organisations are actively in search for better conceptualisations and combinations of approaches for sustainability.

WORKSHOP 3: Social Media and Technology I

Thursday 7 June at 14.30-16.30
Chair: Sirkka Heinonen< Media the with>

Co-configuration with the Media Audience
Tiina Rautkorpi (Research and Development/Media, Helsinki Polytechnic, Finland)

Social media is an important keyword in future. There has been a lot of talk about user-centered programme making and community media, e.g. public access television and radio, which is told automatically promoting democracy in civic society.

I think the real change in cultural meaning making process is a much more complicated challenge and it is more a question of continuous interaction. How to use the means of social media for emancipation, for getting rid of the pre-existing power-relations and separated working cultures between journalism and the civic society.

The creative economy requires diversity and plurality of society and culture. We have to build new arenas for co-configuration between so-called producers and customers. Established communication companies often say that they use public opinion and public feedback to make better programmes. The public access channels and the blogs can be seen as a profitable way to collect material for journalistic purposes. Even today many commercial production companies say that they get so much ideas from the audience, that the role of journalistic gatekeepers is becoming more important than ever. There is still a locked gate between the professionals and the amateurs when planning the final programme content even in so-called interactive programme productions.

The audience needs better access straight into the journalistic production process. This means we have to organize the whole professional process in a more interactive way. In my presentation I suggest this is an essential place for intervention in participatory action research.

Social Media – How to Broker Innovative Combinations?
Mikko Ahonen & Katri Lietsala (Hypermedia Laboratory, University of Tampere, Finland)

Social media is a combination of online tools and platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other (Wikipedia, 2007). In this article, we investigate how the current social media core services utilize tools to enable brokering, by compounding several resources from different sources into innovative end results.

Brokers translate, coordinate and align perspectives from multiple communities. When a person or an organization belongs to different communities and transfers different practices from one to another, they act as brokers (Wenger, 1998). Some brokers rely on a strategy for exploiting the networked nature of the innovation process and building new communities around innovative re-combinations (Hargadon & Sutton, 1997). The recent Open Innovation paradigm (Chesbrough 2003, 2006) emphasizes brokers working as intermediators and their role in the innovation process.

The collective creativity of web communities are changing business models of companies and service providers. In the social media, this development is driven by special brokering platforms and tools that need a closer look. The peer-to-peer distribution and community-based media production have already challenged traditional ways of operating. For example, weblogs are used for “klogging”, as a tool for personal and corporate knowledge management (Bowman & Willis 2003).

This research inspects different brokering models (Hargadon & Sutton 1997, Wenger 1998, Bowman & Willis 2003) and tries to explain how brokering takes place in the organizational and individual level in social media services. As a research method, we use case-based reasoning; interview data is available from the Tekes Parteco project, where authors work as researchers. Case examples cover several social media, community-enabling Web 2.0 services (del.icio.us, InnoCentive, EInnews).

Social Media Applications for Innovative Working Environments
Toni Ahlqvist, Minna Halonen & Sirkka Heinonen (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Finland)

A new digital culture is emerging in Knowledge Society - a culture of user driven social media. The concept of “social media” refers to applications where user actions and user generated content play a central role. Such applications of social media may be based entirely on user driven content (UDC). The most familiar examples of these applications are probably blogs and wikis. Flickr and YouTube are further apt showcases of social media applications. Social media may be one of the leading sources of creative business opportunities and new business models in the future. One needs to take just a few current examples to highlight this point. Amazon processes book purchases into recommendations and lets the readers write the reviews. Another example, web based search service Cha-Cha, utilizes crowd sourcing as a business model to produce flexible knowledge services. Also, more familiar services may be carried out in new ways, e.g. “grounded trading” in eBay. We claim that social media processes and applications can be used to support open innovation and knowledge sharing in companies and institutional networks. Social media thickens and “re-wires” the relationships between the user and service. This re-wiring can be a source of personalized and flexible products.

Alongside with the new products, social media applications can also be used to promote creativity and innovativeness among the knowledge workers by transforming work environments. Social media may be utilized to steer company’s or organization’s course toward a new interactive digital learning and innovation culture. Future-oriented companies are transforming workspaces to integrate people, digital spaces and physical working spaces to create better collaboration, to stimulate innovation and to increase staff empowerment and wellbeing. The origins of work modes, “office mentalities”, and even the definition of the concept of “work” may be reconstructed, since the common industrial age meanings of the work have little to do with work in the web-based Knowledge Society. New work environments in the emerging digital world – WiFi connected world – are designed for mobile nomad workers who are not dependent on certain office space or on established routines for their work. These environments offer a menu of choices of different activity spaces to empower people to accomplish their tasks in settings designed to best accommodate their actions. In brief, the search for collaborative creativity is increasingly done by combining digital and physical spaces. This paper discusses the varieties of roles that social media applications can have in the new working milieus of future oriented companies and organizations.

WORKSHOP 4: Foresight Methods

Thursday 7 June at 14.30-16.30
Chair: Jari Kaivo-oja

 

Culture as Innovation in Vocational Higher Education
Lauri Kurkela (School of Technology Oulu, Oulu University of Applied Sciences, Finland)

Soft System Methodology (SSM) has been used to analyze the Development Challenges of Organizational Learning, Curriculum Development, Learning, Teaching and Work Life Cooperation in Vocational Higher Education as an Cultural Innovation Process. SSM produces Shared Understanding of the Cultural Innovation Process as a Well-Managed Process. This Process can be described and understood through a Multilayer System with Layer Specific Paradigms and Resources. The Identified Layers are: (1) International, National and Regional Layer. (2) Institutional and Network Cooperation Layer. (3) Curriculum and Course Layer. (4) Layer of Learning Resources.  (5) Media Elements and Related Metadata Layer. Soft System Methodology guides on each Layer to identify Paradigms which affect the Synergy related to the Cultural Innovation Process. Identified Paradigms are tools to guide the Institutional Learning Process.

 

The Layers and Paradigms identified here help to understand more deeply this complex problem area. Paradigms related Formal and Informal Features are Key Factors to understand and guide the Cultural Innovation Process. The Cultural Innovation develops through Paradigm Shifts and Development of Resources. Resources are classified to: Pedagogical, Content and Functional Resources. If someone uses this model to Institutional Analyses, formulates a Vision, he/she also can use this model to determine the Desired Future Cultural State of the Institute and what kind of Paradigm Shifts and Development Tasks are needed to achieve the Desired Future State.

Information Sources for Anticipating Changes in
the Business Environment: A Case Study of Foresight Experts' Means for Grasping the Future
Elina Hiltunen (Finland Futures Research Centre, Turku School of Economics, Finland)

Environmental scanning is a method that organizations use to find out information about the future changes. Organizations may have business intelligent departments, market research units or scanning units whose job is to search for these changes. For scanning, various sources of information are used by these departments. Also employees constantly search for information intentionally or unintentionally from different sources as a part of their work practice.

My interest in this study is the sources of information that are excellent in reporting about the weak signals about future. In my study I have made a questionnaire for futures researchers and consultants, whose main task is to look for the future changes, of their ways to search information for the future. Especially, the sources of information these people use, were asked. The results of this study could be used for organizational purposes too in prioritising the sources to scan.

Changing Identities – Changing Designs: Building up a Large Foresight Program in the Field of Cultural Evolution Research
Sam Inkinen & Jari Koskinen (CID Research Group, Finland) & Jari
Kaivo-oja (CID Research Group and Finland Futures Research Centre, Turku School of Economics, Finland)

Future oriented thinking is vital for any forward planning or policy activity to be able to meet future challenges proactively in organizations. The paper discusses emerging challenges in cultural evolution research and analyses. The themes of the discussion in the paper are connected to the CID Research Group, which is a new starting research group in Finland Futures Research Centre (FFRC). The idea of the paper is define main visions, goals and foresight scoping approaches for the CID Research Group. As we know today, it is important to make good and detailed scoping in the changing contexts of foresight designing and planning, running the foresight process and follow up of foresight process and results.

CID Research Group & Lab is a transdisciplinary group, which operates under Finland Futures Research Centre. The CID derives from Changing Identities, but it can also be attached to the words Changing Design. The expertise of the group is based on a wide, international and transdisciplinary networks. The CID Research Group combines transdisciplinary research with exploratory activities. The group focuses on developing expertise in design, architecture, communications, marketing, art, media and the relevant technologies.

Generally defined, the CID Research Group is going to focus on social, cultural and technological changes at global and local levels. CID Research Group & Lab, under this umbrella theme, investigates:

 

The scoping of the CID Research Group is having the following perspectives:

 

The CID Research Group is focusing its research on new media: social media, interactive media, hybrid media, cross-competences and transdisciplinarity analyses, on creativity and innovative environments, accelerating intelligence, and local special issues.

 

New media research field includes various special topics of research including the following topics:

 

Cross-competences and transdisciplinarity topics of the CID Research Group are the following ones:

 

Creativity and innovative environments topics of the CID Research Group are the following ones:

 

Accelerating intelligence research field is focused on the following sub-themes:

Local dimensions research field is focused on the following sub-themes:

We can conclude that it is important to make detailed scoping process for foresight activities in the field of cultural evolution process. There are many emerging research topics as well as novel issues, which can change our societies in a large scale. In the very special case of the CID Research Group, the scoping process was done by small expert team, which is having a long experience history in the field of social and cultural evolution studies.

There are many other alternative ways to do scoping in the cultural evolution studies. For example, stakeholders and larger expert networks as well as laymen can be one source for scoping foresight activities. In the future development of the CID Research Group the scoping of R&D activities will continue. This implies that the team is having a rolling priorities research agenda, which is changing as times go by. The strategic advantage of small expert group is a strong commitment and focusing on the selected topics and issues.

WORKSHOP 5: Cultural Theory and Creativity

Thursday 7 June at 14.30-16.30
Chair: Olli Hietanen

Creativity - the Heart of Culture
Katriina Siivonen (Ethnology, University of Turku and Finland Futures Research Centre Turku, School of Economics, Finland)

An essential question concerning the concept of culture is:
- What is the relationship between a culture as a whole, and heterogeneous cultural processes with change and variation?

I will argue that culture is primarily a global and heterogeneous semiotic interaction process. In this process cultural, both verbal and material, phenomena are in constant change and variation. It is not possible to distinguish different cultures from each other with clear boundaries.

Secondly, culture is a condensation of relatively constant cultural phenomena among interrelated people. These phenomena consist of both conscious symbols and unconscious elements. In the mutual interaction process people give influences and they adapt them, and the process develops with relative homogeneity. In this process it is possible to perceive different, original cultures with some kind of boundaries.

Thirdly, culture is a symbolic and clearly argued knowledge of the original essences of different cultures. On this level, cultures are “imagined communities”. The essential qualities of these symbolical cultural wholes are not necessarily the same ones, than the ones that can be observed among interrelated people described above. However, both symbolic knowledge of different cultures as well as condensations of constant cultural phenomena are subordinate to the primary global, heterogeneous and creative process of culture.

It is necessary to take into consideration all these ontological sides of culture for to understand cultural creativity and innovativeness in all different contexts.

THE FUTURE BIRCHBARK CULTURE
Pekka Virtanen (University of Helsinki, Finland)

The culture concept is strongly coming by the conversation of the economical and ecological values of forest. However culture is often seen concisely and at a distance of the dynamic content it has in the culture theory. Culture is useful concept to reach the creativeness of the future but often it creates images of the past birchbark culture.

What Do You Mean, Creative Economy? – A Conceptual Mapping from Five Fields of Science
Tomi Kallio, Taina Rajanti, Kirsi-Mari Vihermaa & Hanna Willner (Pori University Consortium, Turku School of Economics, Finland)

During the last few years, various concepts, books, articles, etc. linked to the term ‘creativity’ have colonized both academic and everyday life discourses. If someone should be raised above others, it is, perhaps, Richard Florida who opened the Pandora’s Box. Soon after the debate on ‘creative class’, various other, similar concepts have faced their triumph, such as creative industry, creative economy, creative leadership.

Different concepts attached to creativity overlap several fields of science, and scholars use these creativity related concepts even in conflicting ways. It is therefore only fair to say that scholars from different fields should pay much more attention to defining their concepts and thus clarifying their messages.

The ambitious purpose of this paper is to try to clarify the meaning of creative economy by bringing together the perspectives of five scholars from different fields, approaching the concept from their own academic backgrounds. The respective fields of science are: marketing, accounting and finance, management and organizations, sociology, and content design.

The goal of this paper is find a common ground or at least a field where the mentioned approaches can encounter, and open room for further discussion. The analysis will be looking for interfaces and intersections, as well as gaps in the present discussion. While it is obvious that the mentioned fields make only a portion of the overall mixture of the heterogeneous academic discourse connected to creative economy, a synthetic analysis from five different fields should have its novelty value.

Re-Thinking ‘Knowledge Culture’: What It Isn’t
and What It must Be in the 21st Century
Ruben Nelson (Foresight, Canada)

The paper will re-think what we must mean in the 21st Century by such phrases as ‘knowledge culture’, ‘knowledge society’ and ‘knowledge economy’, if the human species is to survive the century with a reasonable degree of prosperity, grace and humanity.  This paper can be seen as an exercise in conceptual clarification driven by the insights of strategic foresight into the emerging conditions of the 21st Century.

To set up the core of the paper, the following views will be briefly sketched but not detailed.  These views are background to the paper, but not the heart of the paper.

Given the above, the heart of the paper will explore and lay out:

 

http://www.tukkk.fi/tutu/conference2007/

9th International Conference of

Finland Futures Research Centre and Finland Futures Academy

in Collaboration with Turku 2011 – Finland’s Candidate for the European Capital of Culture 2011

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