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Heritage as a basis for creativity in creative industries: the case of taste industries

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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to focus on the specificities of the creative processes in taste industries: industries that have connected the artistic and industrial dimensions to supply goods and services—demand for which derives not from the logic of needs and necessity, but from the logic of pleasures, tastes, ethic preferences and hedonism. These taste industries belong to the creative industries but, unlike scientific and technological production, they work not on the basis of cumulative knowledge (replacing goods by better quality amenities over time) but through the creation of ideas, drawings, recipes, goods and services which pass through time, and which constitute heritages. Thus, creativity works on the basis of heritages: that is, past and accumulated creativity. The paper considers how the different types of heritage (craftsmanship knowledge, creative knowledge, tastes, institutional heritage and common cultural heritage) contribute to creative process. It concludes on the double-edged effect of heritages, which while bestowing competitive advantages and favouring the development of creativity, do orient development along a given path, promoting a certain kind of creativity that may lead to lock-in effects, and build obstacles in the way of development.

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Notes

  1. Rochefort (2001) reports the increasing consumer demand for heritage, which is construed as a demand for stability. Consumers are anxious to rediscover their traditions, their history; they are looking for their 'roots'. Moreover, in a global world, consumers seek to be world citizens and consumers, to broaden their knowledge and understanding of other people and creations, and, particularly, their gastronomic creations.

  2. We use the word “heritage” in a meaning different from the one generally used. Heritages include not only "official" and "institutional" heritages as museums, libraries, archaeological and historic sites, archives, and so on but also all the heritages made by the accumulation and sedimentation of creativity: for instance the heritage of know-how constituted in the Maison de couture or the recipes characteristic of culinary cultures.

  3. Marilyn Monroe famously told a reporter in 1954 that all she wore in bed was “five drops of Chanel N°5,” thereby creating millions of fantasies among her own admirers and long lines at department store perfume counters in the USA.

  4. Today the majority of goods include a lot of characteristics, among which some taste characteristics. For instance car industry supplies cars with sophisticated design to appeal to consumers’ tastes. Nevertheless, for almost people, cars remain utilitarian goods. Addis and Holbrook (2001) distinguish ‘utilitarian products', ‘hedonic products', and ‘balanced products'. Taste industries refer to hedonic products.

  5. Roux E (2001) La conciliation des contraires: créativité et rigueur dans la gestion de l’identité d’une marque, communication to the workshop La mode, un laboratoire de créativité, Turin, ICER, octobre 2001.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Reims, Reims, France

    Christian Barrère

  2. 7 rue de l’Onglet, 95300, Ennery, France

    Christian Barrère

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  1. Christian Barrère
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Correspondence to Christian Barrère.

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Barrère, C. Heritage as a basis for creativity in creative industries: the case of taste industries. Mind Soc 12, 167–176 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11299-013-0122-8

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