Abstract
Artists are often seen as innovators and producers of creative and extraordinary new ideas. Additionally, experiencing art and artistic processes is an important opportunity for learning and exploration. Thus, corporations and scientific organizations have experimented with initiatives that generate artscience collaboration, such as fellowships, long-term collaborations with artists, and artist-in-residence programs. Looking at outcomes in the long-term, it is possible to identify important contributions to scientific, technological, and artistic fields that stem from artscience collaboration opportunities in organizations. On the other hand, it is often difficult to define immediate tangible outcomes of such processes as innovation as interdisciplinary interaction and learning processes are valuable experiences that do not always manifest directly in outcomes that can be measured. Drawing from cases of artscience programs and qualitative interviews with program managers, scientists, and artists, this article explores how artscience collaboration in an organization adds value and helps overcome organizational challenges regardless of such outcomes. By shifting the focus from the outcome to the process of artscience collaboration, it is possible to discover in more depth value-added contributions of artscience experiences on an individual level (e.g., new ways of knowing and thinking, understanding of materials and processes, and learning). Moreover, such contributions tell stories of connecting the process of artscience programs to the organizations’ goals of developing a new generation of leaders and driving a more adaptive, innovative culture. These benefits of artscience opportunities need to be supported by managerial activities in the organization. Thus, it enables a more differentiated understanding of possible contributions of artscience collaboration to organizations and helps to define the best model to create such opportunities. The article also recommends future research directions to further advance artscience collaboaration, especially in light of pertinent movements such as STEAM and Open Innovation, and promising developments in related fields such as neuro-aesthetics.
Highlights
Just like society and individuals, organizations today are confronted with global challenges from climate change to digitization in private, public, and work life, from antibiotic resistance to microplastics in the food chain and growing waste problems, from widening income disparity to the paradox between an interconnected world and the rising forces of nationalism
As artscience collaboration is connected to the latest developments in science and technology, with their contributions to and potential pitfalls in society, economy, and industrial practices, another important research question is to look at how artscience collaboration can help organizations navigate changes and issues stemming from these developments: automation, digitization, replacement of traditional products, professions, and new ways of working
What are the implications to organizational learning and development, when a new breed of talents educated the STEAM way, which is better suited for tackling complex issues organizations face, enters the workforce? What new thinking will be needed from a human resources perspective, on their hiring, training, and retention? How might organizations redesign their structure to both take advantage of the well-rounded skills of these new talents and cater to their development? These questions may lead to interesting discoveries and potential new opportunities for artscience collaboration
Summary
Just like society and individuals, organizations today are confronted with global challenges from climate change to digitization in private, public, and work life, from antibiotic resistance to microplastics in the food chain and growing waste problems, from widening income disparity to the paradox between an interconnected world and the rising forces of nationalism. The roles of the artists in residence vary: sometimes their presence is connected to specific projects or departments; sometimes they are collaborating with individual employees for a long period; sometimes they give workshops; yet other times they aim to produce an artwork. These residency opportunities are created to open a space for an ABI that goes beyond consultancy or single workshops with an artist. As interdisciplinary approaches are essential to tackling complex problems [12], opportunities that facilitate artscience collaboration and bring in artistic perspectives relating to society and culture can play a vital role in addressing the challenges organizations are confronted with. Emerging Art and Technology) activity [20] that provides opportunities for different residency formats in the field of emerging technologies
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