Arts and Design as Translational Mechanisms for Academic Entrepreneurship: The metaLAB at Harvard Case Study
“Business, Innovation and Art” Special Series Issue #3
By Luca Simeone, Giustina Secundo and Giovanni Schiuma *
Published in Elsevier JOurnal of Business Research, April 2018
[Special Series editorial comment: although focused on academic entrepreneurship, the article does an excellent job articulating how arts and design can drive organizational value creation, relevant to entrepreneurship and innovation at large.]
ABSTRACT:
This paper proposes arts and design as translational mechanisms to connect and align stakeholders, particularly in the context of academic entrepreneurship where multiple stakeholders with different expertise and interests work together in joint endeavors. Insights gathered from an ethnographic investigation carried out at metaLAB — an academic laboratory located at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, USA) — build the empirical foundation. Findings show that various forms of arts and design (including poetry, photography, art installations, motion graphics videos, data visualization) play an important role in connecting metaLAB to external stakeholders and in activating multiple value drivers. The adoption of arts- and design-based initiatives allows the translation of different needs and wants of stakeholders into shared meanings, but also supports emotional and cognitive engagement and creative and divergent viewpoints. This paper contributes to existing studies focusing on how arts-based initiatives can support organizations in exploiting their potential for organizational value creation.
EXCERPTS:
“The complexity and turbulence of current global, interconnected economies and societies are affecting a wide spectrum of organizations,including universities and higher education systems moving towards more entrepreneurial configurations to pursue innovation development, social and economic engagement (Siegel & Wright, 2015; Urbano & Guerrero, 2013).”
“However, in these joint collaborative endeavors, stakeholders [internal: alumni, faculty, administration and university staff; and external: industry, government and regional/ local community, citizens] generally tend to have different needs and interests, speak different languages and might not be aligned in terms of which kind of value should be created (Simeone, 2016; Simeone, Secundo, & Schiuma, 2017a). Diverse notions of value can be complementary or in conflict, agreed upon or contested by stakeholders. In all these cases, stakeholders engage in processes of negotiation and responses to external factors (McAdam, Miller, McAdam, & Teague, 2012), to ensure that their needs and wants are systematically addressed, orchestrated and balanced (Fogelberg & Sanden, 2008; Garrett-Jones, Turpin, Burns, & Diment, 2005). Along a similar line of thinking, Chiesa and Piccaluga (1998) note that given the different objectives and languages prevalent in academic and industrial contexts, there is also a need for translators, or translation mechanisms, between these two groups of stakeholders. This notion of translation denotes the challenge of defining a common platform of communication and knowledge sharing & transfer among multiple and diverse stakeholders. Despite the relevance of translation as a mechanism to support scientific processes has been studied (Ito, 2016; Moultrie, 2015; Rusk, 2016), there is still a lack of investigations about how to support the alignment and collaboration of different stakeholders, particularly in the context of academic entrepreneurship processes.
“In an attempt to cover this gap, the paper proposes a conceptualization of the arts and design as a translational mechanism to connect and align different stakeholders for value creation dynamics in academic entrepreneurship. Art, interpreted as a cornerstone of human life, provides a vehicle that can inspire and improve today’s management discipline and practices (Adler, 2006; Taylor & Ladkin, 2009). As argued by Schiuma (2011): ‘The planned managerial use of art’s forms (i.e. Arts-based Initiatives, ABIs) can support and drive the development of organisational value creation capacity and in turn improve performance’ (p.8). Although the boundaries between art and design are blurred, we distinguish design from arts following the definition proposed by Heskett (2002) and further contextualized by Norman and Verganti (2014): design is “the deliberate and reasoned shaping and making of our environment in ways that satisfy our needs and give meaning to our lives” (2014, p. 80).”
“… intentional and instrumental use of arts and design — ideas, concepts, needs and interests of the various stakeholders involved in academic entrepreneurship undergo semiotic translations and are materialized into visual, audio and tangible formats. These acts of translation support organizational processes, such as networking, communication, knowledge transfer, inspiration, learning, development and transformation, that allow stakeholders to be connected, to agree upon shared meaning and jointly work on collaborative actions.”
“From the Latin ‘aris’, the concept of art has been used to denote any skills or craft aimed at designing or building something by using creativity, intelligence and mastery (Strati, 2000).”
“… art can be used as a metaphor indicating creative activities or creative accomplishments (Austin & Devin, 2003). Adopting the arts to support organizational dynamics means creating the enabling conditions for transforming the organizations in various ways.”
“… the arts can produce a wide range of benefits and, especially, can help to stimulate new ways of thinking; to renew routines, processes, values, identity, image, brand and culture; to challenge established mindsets; to shape workplace innovation and add value to products and services; and to develop new skills, competences and behaviors (Adler, 2006; Darsø, 2004; Harris, 1999; Meisiek & Barry, 2014; Nissley, 2010; Styhre & Eriksson, 2008).”
“The planned managerial use of arts-based initiatives (ABIs) can sustain organizations in their efforts to face today’s competitive challenges and improve their value creation capability (Schiuma, 2011). Through ABIs new strategic organizational value drivers, such as passion, emotions, hope, moral, imagination, aspirations, and creativity (Boyatzis, McKee, & Goleman, 2002; Bruch & Ghoshal, 2003; Cross, Baker, & Parker, 2003; Gratton, 2007; Schiuma, 2011; Steers, Mowday, & Shapiro, 2004), relationships can be fruitfully developed, generally first at the individual level, engaging a person emotionally and intellectually, and then at group and organizational levels. The focus of an ABI is not the work of art in itself, but the experiences triggered by arts. An ABI employs arts to ignite, catalyze, drive, harness and govern emotions and energies within organizations and to foster new viewpoints and ways of thinking. This process can have an impact not only on people, but also on the organizational infrastructure of tangible and intangible assets. The development of organizational value creation capacity of ABIs is connected to the creation and transformation of organizational knowledge assets. The arts sustain the human- based nature of the organizations (Ghoshal & Bartlett, 1999; Hamel, 2000), where elements such as emotions, ethics and energy (Fineman, 1985; Mintzberg, 1985; Strati, 1992; Turner, 1990), are seen as key factors affecting the capacity of the organizations to create value.”
“… arts-based initiative (ABIs) can have an impact on two fundamental dimensions of an organization: (1) the organization’s human resources, and more generally any organizational stakeholder; and (2) the infrastructure, or the overall tangible and intangible structural assets grounding the working mechanisms of a business model and supporting stakeholders in the creation and delivery of value.”
“… arts and design can be used to translate complexity into something that is easier to appreciate and, consequently, to align stakeholders because they better understand each other. The use of arts and design aims to produce rich and immersive experiences, which also move, inspire, help reframing and represent organizational, social, cultural issues in all their complexity. This sort of emotional and cognitive activation helps stakeholders in realizing that the same project can be seen from multiple viewpoints and, consequently, in being more open to accept divergences and build upon convergences. This is a key issue in academic entrepreneurship where it is frequently the case that stakeholders have different agendas. Consistently with the capacity of arts- and design-based initiatives to support connecting and bonding, design- and arts-based translations arts enable the creation of an atmosphere and affect the characteristics of a workplace so that they are more conducive of creativity, collaboration and innovation.”
*Author affiliations: Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Aalborg University, Denmark; Department of Innovation Engineering, University of Salento, Lecce, Italyc; Department of Mathematics, Information and Economics, University of Basilicata, Potenza, Italy, respectively.
Past issues:
(BIA) Introduction
(BIA Issue #2)
Work of Art
by Esko Kilpi
Coming up next:
(BIA Issue #4)
The Hand and the Head
by Piero Formica
To be followed by:
Articles to be published in “Business, Open Innovation and Art” Special Issue in MDPI
