The Business of Creativity. 

There has always been an uneasy relationship between the artistic creative industries and large corporate companies and finance. There is a deep suspicion amongst the artists that the corporation will not only sell their products but try to influence and control the creative process.creative control  This was always the (quite legitimate ) worry for musicians signing to one of the large record companies.In engineering there has been in recent years the scaling back of engineering management layers in order to better control the engineering product or engineering schedule at source. Historically engineering management has been essential, to protect or defend the engineers dilemmas,explaining in management speak the problems and difficulties regarding the design and production of complex products.In large corporations the need to save money has meant cutting out the middle management but in reality it means the creatives must also take up the role of administration and explanation.

Complexity and Explanation.

The products are now so complex that the creatives need more time than ever to analyse and problem solve. The schizophrenic behaviour required by fulfilling all roles is mentally debilitating & ultimately self defeating. Why ask the techies or creatives to do cost, budget, schedule and contract management as part of their daily routines when business specialists could be targeted to manage the complexity these tasks. Where is the respect and understanding between the business and creative disciplines?.
Its getting difficult to attract highly skilled engineers into certain specialist areas of industry, by adding tasks (such as costings scheduling administration) it can only dilute the quality of contribution of the engineers employed in specialised roles. The old methods such as  no.of lines of code and power point slides cannot now with explanations of complex interdependencies. Increasingly we need some kind of visualisations or graphics to show project timelines and the evolution of development to keep the dialogues going (some time for years)between teams on a project.

Institutions and Added Value 

In recent times some corporate record companies have failed, due to musicians & artists selling their music directly on the internet EMI. The record companies have not been able to let the musicians identify any "added value" from the management of their creative talent.It is not such a large step to think that some time in the future engineering/science creatives may be able to sell their talent directly to projects funded by private or microfunded Microfinance intiatives and travel between projects without the need to be employed by the current major industry players. If large corporate organisations want to remain relevant to these industries they must demonstrate added value to the engineers & scientists that they employ. They can do this by providing infrastructure and stability for multiple & transient teams and disciplines to work together.

Joy in Numbers

One of the main benefits the larger employer can exploit is the sheer number of employees they employ. The melting pot of talented staff is one of the main reasons stay working in these large companies in spite of lower wages,poor quality working environments and substandard management techniques and expertise. Allowing networking and collaboration possibilities and a better environment to support collaboration and development activities will ensure better engagement and belonging. A larger employer may have available funds to provide a good facility to enable innovation and collaboration, this environment when provided thoughtfully, this can affect the quality of products,innovation and production creative environments Creative communities do not always appear where they are wanted - they sometimes just appear.  For instance it would be hard to get a group of any painters or musicians to live/work anywhere they didn't want to or that was detrimental to their work. What most creative people want in science art or otherwise is a chance talk to other creative people about their work and the opportunity to create stuff.