Creative analytics: Towards data‐inspired creative decisions

Abstract

AbstractOrganisations across many industries are increasing the use of evidence‐based approaches to decision‐making through adoption of business analytics. Creative processes and decisions are an area of organisational decision‐making which has traditionally been highly intuition‐based, and where professional culture and practices are often very different from the engineering disciplines from which data‐driven decision approaches originate. Through the case study of the analytics‐oriented transformation of creative decisions at Rovio, a leading game development company, this study seeks to understand how organisations can make their creative decision processes more evidence‐based, while retaining the best features of artistic intuition and human creativity. The case study highlights several issues that need to be delicately managed and balanced to effectively combine analytics and human creativity, and offers five principles for such “creative analytics”: (1) build shared analytics values but provide tailored BA support; (2) build hybrid teams; (3) balance commercial and creative goals; (4) encourage creative experimentation and learning; and (5) make data‐inspired, not data‐driven, creative decisions.