Paper short abstract:

Creative people are not God. We do not create ex nihilo. This paper examines the conditions under which creativity is practiced in the Japanese advertising industry.

Paper long abstract:

The advertising industry is all about creativity. Nothing is more damning than to say of a proposal, “It has already been done.” But the creativity demanded does not occur in a vacuum. This paper examines five sets of conditions that affect creativity: the individual creator, the teams in which they participate, client-agency relationships, changing economic conditions, and changing media. The approach combines historical and ethnographic research with social network analysis, and the paper focuses primarily on the period 1981-2006 covered in the author’s on-going research on the social networks of award-winning Japanese advertising creatives.