Polarized worlds and contextual creativity in creative industries: the case of creation processes in the perfume industry

Co-existing within the creative industries, there are opposite worlds with different organizations, creators and approaches to the product development process. Nevertheless, surprising collaborations occur between these worlds. This paper joins the emerging literature that analyses the specificities of the creative industries from both the management and organization viewpoints. From the viewpoint of the product development process, it seeks to analyze how and why designers are able to create differently in two worlds that are based on different creative approaches. In an in-depth exploratory study, we detail two product development processes in the perfume industry and show how the same designers operate in two different contexts. This article proposes a new explanation for these collaborations and the way that creators cross from one world to another. In addition to the social and conventional dimensions that are traditionally used to explain these collaborations in creative industries, we show that these opposite worlds are structured by differences in industry organization, distribution systems and creation processes. We show that the creativity of creators is embedded in a specific context and propose the notion of contextual creativity. We then identify a specific kind of collaboration between opposite worlds: creative symbiosis is observed when a creator develops a creative project in the opposite world.