Innovation and Creative Communities in Industrial Design. A Historical Perspective

Using a unique dataset of 849 prominent products of the XXth century, the study aims at analyzing the main factor affecting the nature and the evolution of innovation in creative industries. In particular, we examine three main issues which have been rarely explored in the literature about innovation in creative industries. Firstly, we analyze whether, and to what extent, innovation in creative sectors is characterized by an idiosyncratic cultural component, which makes it different from traditional forms of innovation. Secondly, we explore how the creative capacity of individual talents is related to the collective innovative performance of design communities. Finally, we add insights into the role of collaborations between firms and designers in generating innovation in this creative industry. Our quantitative analysis confirms that creative and innovative systems of industrial design tend to emerge in different historical periods revealing distinctive characteristics as to their type of creations and firm-designer collaborations. Further, we detect cycles of innovative performance of design communities, whose peaks are sustained by the emergence of new creative generations of designers. Given this preliminary evidence on furniture design, our work suggest that taking into account these three analytical dimensions is crucial for a deeper understanding of new forms of innovation in creative industries.