Do the arts really foster creativity and innovation in business?
July 16th, 2007 at 09:32am Gary Steuer
I recently had the pleasure, with an Americans for the Arts colleague, of participating in a “stakeholders convening” for The Conference Board on the issue of workforce readiness. Their recent study, “Are They Really Ready to Work,” found that businesses rate their incoming workforce (college educated, 2-year college educated, and high school educated) as poorly prepared with the skills needed in the workplace today. In contrast to the national obsession of the past few years on “basic skills” (see No Child Left Behind) - particularly math and science - the corporate folks surveyed (mostly HR execs) rated “applied skills” as particularly critical, and relatively poor in their incoming new workers. These include creativity and innovation, communications skills and teamwork. Sound familiar? We arts and arts education advocates often press our case based on the role the arts can play in building these skills, and in fact many of the HR leaders interviewed for this research cited the arts in talking abut the importance of creativity. But one thing made clear by this stakeholders meeting (the actual content of which I can’t report on because confidentiality was promised in order to foster an open dialogue) was that we don’t seem to have enough data to support this linkage.
Do we really know that the arts foster creativity, innovation and imagination, in ways that make people more creative, innovative employees? (Not just in creative industries, but creative scientists, or financiers or factory supervisors.) It may seem obvious to us - one of those “duh!” questions - but can we prove it? What about the other applied skills - teamwork, collaboration, cultural sensitivity, communications, etc. Again, seems obvious that the arts build these skills, but what research do we have that backs it up, particularly in a workforce context?
Americans for the Arts is now looking at how we might partner with the Conference Board and others to do some research that might build a clearer definition of creativity and innovation in a business context, and more clearly show how the arts can foster the so-called applied skills. The relationship between the arts and workforce development was also one of the themes of our MetLife Foundation National Arts Forum Series this year. And our Creativity Connection program fosters the use of arts-based learning with the current workforce - but this is different than making a case that arts education better prepares workers for 21st Century business challenges.
I would love to know if any of our ArtsBlog readers know of any good existing research in this area; if so, please share it with us. This could even include case studies - for example, a business that finds that new hires that have studied a musical instrument and played in a school orchestra or band excel in some measurable way in the workplace over those without such a background. The more data and tangible examples we can gather, the more powerful a case we can make for the arts and arts education as critical to business competitiveness. Making this case better could be the key to reversing the slippage in corporate arts support we have seen over the past ten years.
