Aesthetics in Business Creativity (ABC)
ASG 2024
People increasingly build identities and express their values through consumer choices. We seem willing to pay more, much more, for a product of a certain design. The last decades brought a design boom into product development. Simultaneously, development goals remind both individuals and organisations of the ecological challenges we face, that a future existentially sustainable life must balance ecological, social and ethical considerations. At first glance, businesses seem to struggle with this somewhat awkward relationship: Is it even possible to build successful organisations intertwining cultural and aesthetic values with economic and sustainable values?
This Advanced Study Group wants to place focus on the aesthetics in business creativity. The argument is that the business organisation is the dominant form for organising collective creativity. It is also where increasingly artistic and culturally creative processes are developing new value, a value that is more and more centred on an aesthetic experience (design, fashion, craft, architecture, gaming, music). What does the aesthetic – economy relationship look like in an opera production and in a ‘design product’ production? And how do aspects of sustainability come into these creative business processes (if at all)?