Conference Themes

Download the conference brochure here.

The field of creative economy wil be approached through three different themes. They frame the scope of keynote speeches and form the basis for workshops held during the congress. The congress themes are:

Theme 1: Creativity in Business and Leadership

Theme 2: Creative Regimes: Immaterial Business, Future Law, and the User of Tomorrow

Theme 3: Designing our Future: Education, Research and Innovation Policy

Theme 1:

Creativity in Business and Leadership

A shift from an industrial to a knowledge and experience society requires new forms of business and leadership. The creative industries are looked upon for answers in how to organize work in a new business environment. In this track, the central questions are, but are not limited to the following:

Leading creative individuals and processes: What is the role of art and design-based methods and thinking for management and leadership?
How can art-based competencies and services be utilized by other sectors?
How to use creativity to lead more effectively?
Experienced bodily knowledge in leadership: What are emotions, rhythm, time, and space paid attention to in workplace interaction?
The relationship between creativity and innovation: Are they separate or how do they link together?

Coordinated by Professor Arja Ropo, University of Tampere

Theme 2:
Creative Regimes: Immaterial Business, Future Law, and the User of Tomorrow

The creative economy allows for, may be even demands, several strategic shifts in the boundary conditions that define contemporary markets. Issues regarding concepts such as usability, privacy, ownership, immaterial production and the very nature of usage become heightened and recast in a market regime defined by creativity and creative products, leading to institutional, cultural and legal shifts in the way in which creativity is incorporated into bigger structures. This track will address questions of how creativity is ordered and organized, all of which have the potential to change the way business activity, the nature of production and consumption, and markets are defined in the future. We welcome contributions analyzing these shifts and beyond.

Possible routes:

Limiting conditions and boundaries in creativity; beliefs, ideas, and rules of action.
Shifts in trade and business models: ownership, production and use of immaterial resources, goods and services
Flows of content creation, consumption and value
Service design and law
Analytical work from IPR legislation to IPR regimes
Collectives, commons and property rights: from creative commons and open source innovation to patent pools and IPR monopolies
Strategic uses and markets for IPR

Sessions to build on contemporary cases from 2009

Coordinated by Professor Saara Taalas, Turku School of Economics, Media Futures Network

Theme 3:

Designing our Future:
Education, Research and Innovation Policy

The shift towards a creative economy poses a demanding task for the development of educational systems and reserach policy making. Methods developed in the field of design have been recently proposed as a new way to reach solutions in a world of accelerated change. This theme concentrates on the following questions:

The role of design in accelerating multi-disciplinary education, research and innovation policy.
Methods, contents and best-practices for raising the next generation.
Strategic Design: Perspectives to global, national and local problems or organizational challenges.
Design and social impact: addressing complex, systemic and inherently human challenges and sustainable development.
The innovative borderlines between design and ICT.

Coordinated by Professor Marjo Mäenpää, University of Art and Design Helsinki