Creativity and Innovation: Processes and Context

 

On the 30th of January, Dr. Pierpaolo Andriani, Kedge Business School, and Dr. Renata Kaminska, SKEMA Business School and the University Côte d’Azur, gave short talks and were part of panel discussion on the topic of “Creativity and Innovation: Processes and Context”, an event organized by the Webster Center of Creativity and Innovation (WCCI). Dr. Andriani’s presentation explored the process of exaptation or how unexpected functions of existing artifacts are discovered serendipitously and lead to new forms of innovation. For example, the discovery of antidepressants followed this innovation path of ‘solutions looking for a problem to solve’. Dr. Kaminska’s talk was concerned with what makes a city more or less creative and, in particular, the role of the middleground in bringing together networks of people in between formal and informal settings. Her example was Nice and the communities of creatives that oftentimes struggle to reach and maintain a middleground in the form of alternative festivals and meeting places. The two presentations and the discussion that followed from them can be accessed here and a podcast with the two speakers is accessible on our podcast webpage.