The Creativity Complex

Wherever we turn, we find creative practices and creative spaces, creative organizations and creative subjects. At work or in public places, in media representations and in advertisements, on social platforms, in schools and universities: There is a demand to be new and special, conspicuous and singular. How did this creativity complex and its imperative to be creative come about? Which terms and concepts enable us to understand its multiple and partly contradictory forms and processes? Where are its limits? Gathering and interweaving 40 short and incisive essays, this companion maps, investigates and illuminates the contemporary creativity complex.

Timon Beyes is Professor of Sociology of Organisation and Culture at Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany, and Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. His work is broadly situated in the research fields of organization studies and organizational sociology and focuses on the processes, spaces and aesthetics of organization in the fields of media culture, art, cities as well as higher education. Jörg Metelmann, born in 1970, teaches Culture and Media Studies at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. He received his PhD from the University of Tübingen, Germany, in 2003 and obtained his post-doctoral qualification from the University of St. Gallen in 2014. His research interests focus on the interaction between man and machine, the creativity complex and the future of business education.