Cultural Sources of Newness

The research unit was established in 2008 to address aspects of innovation that have not received sufficient attention to date, namely the cultural factors that favor creativity and the cultural conditions under which newness is recognized and valued. The research is thus intended to complement the work of scholars who focus on the technical and institutional prerequisites of innovation.

In developing the research program, the strategic choice was made to draw on multiple disciplinary perspectives, including economic sociology, cultural economics, organizational development, cultural anthropology, political science and urban studies. The empirical cases of the projects concentrate on technical, social, artistic or organizational innovations, and they focus on cultural configurations shaping artistic scenes, expert communities or urban quarters.

The research team is undertaking interviews, participant observation and action research in very diverse settings of collaboration between multiple actors in fields like automobile development, product design, business consultancy, and municipal/public issues in order to generate a deep and wide-ranging understanding of the phenomena. Such qualitative methods are supplemented with the creation of data bases, for example on artistic interventions and on architectural competitions.

The projects and doctoral dissertations of the unit are organized in three research fields:

1) Newness and creative spaces
2) Newness from small publics
3) Artistic effects on newness

The research program is flanked by a bridging project on "Cultural framing effects in experimental game theory" in cooperation with the WZB research unit "Market Behavior."

The research program is now in its fourth year and we are starting to identify features that play a role across the various projects and settings. Notions of dissonance, irritation and ambiguity within cultural contexts are proving to be significant, emphasizing the contingent and situational nature of invention. Material cultures are investigated in almost all the projects, and there is evidence of culturally complex procedures of value attribution involving multiple stakeholders in every field.