Kent Hansen works as a collaborative artist and has as well functioned as an international pioneer in the interplay in-between art and organisations. He is the founder (1998) and organiser of the ongoing project ‘democratic innovation’. The activities of this project focus on participatory production, and 'organising' as an artistic medium. Kent Hansen was recently affiliated with ‘Centre for Art and Leadership’, Copenhagen Business School on The Danish Art Council's grant program ‘Artists as Visiting Professors’. Lives and works in Copenhagen.
Innovations: You are working in a new sphere that is called “Art & Business”. Business is mostly rational, art is mostly irrational. What is the reason and value of such collaboration?
Kent Hansen: Firstly, I don’t fully agree that business is rational and artistic sphere is irrational. I think they both are as rational as irrational. But this is not the theme of our discussion, of course.
So, for me, working in the area of “Arts & Business”, or rather: “Art & Organization” is the focus on the process of development or leading processes by different means and ways that opens up for possibilities of development and innovation. A current task in organizations is to involve different kinds of knowledge and experience in their innovative processes; and these various kinds of knowledge is as well ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’. ‘Rationality’ is often mistaken for intellectual knowledge, but non-intellectual knowledge is not necessarily irrational. The problem is that the ‘rational’ organization often perceives and evaluates ideas, innovation and creativity in an intellectual discourse. But an intellectual discourse likely discards potential valuable ‘other ways’ and other types of knowledge.
I work mostly with processes of social innovations, but such processes can apply to product and service innovation too. This work of mine is partly inspired by concepts of user-based innovations – how, as example, customers develop the products themselves, and partly inspired by concepts of employee-driven innovation; addressing the employees’ role in the innovative processes. Integrating the employees’ roles and ways in generating innovations could be very valuable.
But fundamentally my work is grounded in artistic and aesthetic ways of production and ways of organizing, as artistic and aesthetic ways of production and ways of organizing addresses, uses – and gives access to – knowledge that are not usually sanctioned in, for example, an organizational context. So, the processes that I often address in my various ‘art and organization’-projects are ‘flushing out’ different kinds of knowledge and experience that can be beneficial for the process of developments itself.
If the corporations are ready to open up for ‘innovation from below’ they can learn a lot from artistic and aesthetic ways of production and ways of organizing and will thereby be able to sanction ‘ways’ and knowledge that usually are discarded in the specific organization. Today this could be an advantage for businesses that consider innovation in processes, products, and services to be crucial.
I: You are talking about different types of innovations. Some years ago R&D department or customers or office workers generated the great part of the innovations. You are saying that art can help companies in developing innovative processes. Is it popular practice in Europe?
K.H.: I mainly speak about specifics in Denmark because I have mostly worked with such projects in a Danish context. In Denmark in 2000 there was a report put out by The Ministry of Trade and The Ministry of Culture. This report, called "The Creative Alliance", addressed the intersection between arts and business. But there are similar initiatives in other European countries. Generally such initiatives address cultural production such as music, film-making, design, and computer games, but as well interconnection between ways in the cultural sphere and the ways of divisional business. This year, in the context of The Nordic Council, some programs have been initiated in this area, as a state funded ‘Centre of Culture and Experience Economy’ was established in Denmark. When it comes to artist working in this field most are working in an international setting, as myself, though my work is mainly based in Denmark.
Concurrently different kind of research have been carried out by different research institutions, some of these by The Centre of Art and Leadership at Copenhagen Business School that focus on how artistic ways can inform the concept of leadership. Generally, in Denmark and in other European countries most ‘arts & business’ project are about corporate branding, cultural sponsorship, etc., and about culture as an industry on its own terms, feeding into the concepts of ‘experience economy’. So I would say it is very diverse sphere, but for me, the most interesting is about art and ways of organizing.
There have been various projects working in particular with innovation and organizing. But, as I mentioned, this field is until now a smaller part of the larger arts & business scheme. I have done such ‘art & organizing’ projects both with organizations and with research institutions. And I have also initiated and organized public debates and seminars on the topic because intermix between art and business is somewhat controversial both in the business field and the art field. This area and development need to be discussed in general terms too. And I have during some years now been in contact with a number of business-schools regarding the subject. So generally I would not say that this topic is very wide-spread, it is still in a growing but now accelerating stage. Still there is much research to do and projects to realize. I will work in the direction of cooperation with different groups and spheres in specific projects that can be jointly developed and researched.
I: You say that Art & Business is not very widespread. But what are perspectives of this area? And could you tell about your own next projects?
K.H.: Now, being here in Kiev, I’m exploring how to organize a specific process in Kiev. From the setoff in an art project we are working on how to address the intersection between private and public space in the city of Kiev by inviting various partners into the project. This is my way of working: inviting potential partners into a common process of development. We are as well addressing executives that through a joint process of development have possibility to consider ways of managing their organization in a rapidly changing environment. Management has affects in the social sphere; it has an affect on the environment, on the working force, on people’s lives. Companies have as well the problematic of recruiting new and skilled employees, so how they are organized is becoming more and more important.
How to deal with all these issues that we have address here is about how to concept management or leadership. ‘New’ recognitions of management or leadership will create new strategies in organizations that can give them new advantages. This is then the competitive advantage: If you are able to change your way of organizing so it can match a ‘global’ and a ‘local’ condition, the societal conditions included. The question is especially how to do this in a specific context. Change of core organizational concepts will in any case come out of sheer necessity, but then probably be hard work and maybe too late. The way of artists’ production and organizing addresses diversity, different kinds of knowledge, different ways of approaching a problematic and can help in informing us how to organize in a sustainable way, without discarding crucial possibilities.
02.07.08
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