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Auto-tuned and R-Squared: Reflecting Audience Quality Evaluations in the Creative Process in Music Production and Cancer Research

Organizing Creativity in the Innovation Journey

ISBN: 978-1-83982-875-1, eISBN: 978-1-83982-874-4

Publication date: 17 September 2021

Abstract

While audiences play a key role in the implementation and ultimate success of novel ideas, how audiences are reflected in negotiations about quality within the creative process remains undertheorized. We examine this question through a comparative ethnography of two settings where digital technology use magnifies the countless micro-decisions involved in producing a creative output and considerations of audience evaluation throughout the creative process – Nashville music production and systems biology cancer research. We find that actors encounter a fundamental tension between two competing standards of quality: the technically perfect, processed and ideal versus the empirically grounded, unprocessed and real. We show how actors navigate this tension vis-á-vis three different audiences – internal peers, extended community, and external reviewers – and how this manifests differently across audiences and the arts and sciences, depending on the audience’s expertise. Our study illuminates the tension between the “ideal versus real” in creative processes that is brought to the fore when creating with digital technology, extends extant research on audiences and organizing for creativity, and offers unique insights from our comparative ethnography across the arts and sciences.

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

We are deeply grateful to Elke Schuessler, Silviya Svejenova Velikova, and Patrick Cohendet for forging the opportunity for this special volume and especially to Elke for her thoughtful guidance as our lead editor. We are also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers, Jörg Sydow, and organizers and participants of the International Conference “Organizing Creativity in the Innovation Journey” at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany for their constructive feedback and encouragement of this manuscript. We thank Worcester Polytechnic Institute and University of Groningen for conference travel support.

Citation

Lingo, E.L. and Bruns, H.C. (2021), "Auto-tuned and R-Squared: Reflecting Audience Quality Evaluations in the Creative Process in Music Production and Cancer Research", Schuessler, E., Cohendet, P. and Svejenova, S. (Ed.) Organizing Creativity in the Innovation Journey (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 75), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 91-113. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20210000075008

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited