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.