The art of customer knowledge transfer in creative work: Customer involvement in freelancer-led projects in creative industries

Abstract

Creative industries (CIs) have attracted considerable attention from academic research in the last few decades and their economic impact and job-creation role is now indisputably acknowledged. These industries are rooted in individual creativity and exhibit distinctive features, such as high uncertainty, symbolic value, and the prevalence of small and micro-sized firms in the sector. Among these micro-sized firms, freelancers are at the core of the CIs workforce.

The purpose of this research was to understand how freelancers in CIs conduct knowledge-transfer activities in the context of customer involvement in product development processes. By focusing on freelancers, this research aimed to address a gap in the literature in which freelancers have been consistently ignored or only considered with larger organisations. As such, their distinctive characteristics—for example, the liability of smallness—have not been acknowledged as having a potential influence on how freelancers operate.

In a similar manner, the importance of knowledge and customer involvement for CIs have been extensively covered in the literature and they are regarded as crucial for creative industries. Despite this importance, academic research on customer knowledge transfer in the field remains limited, even though there is evidence that knowledge-transfer models from other sectors might be unsuitable for CIs.

In order to bridge this gap, this research was conducted as an exploratory case study in which cases from different sectors of CIs and two different countries were investigated. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and codified by using a three-step process and the Gioia method. This research resulted in three published articles and an introduction section.

The introduction section of this dissertation positions the study within the literature on knowledge transfer and customer involvement in CIs, reviews existing studies on these topics, describes the research strategy and methodology, provides the overall findings of this research, discusses the main theoretical and managerial contributions, and suggests avenues for further research. With regard to the published articles, Article I focuses on the knowledge acquisition activities used by freelancers in CIs. Article II provides an overview of knowledge codification activities by focusing on the use of boundary objects by freelancers in CIs. Article III changes the scope slightly to analyse barriers for knowledge transfer by focusing on a failure case.

Overall, this research conceptualised customer knowledge-transfer activities conducted by freelancers in product development processes in CIs. In doing so, the data revealed that while freelancers in CIs engage in customer knowledge acquisition, conversion, and application, these stages are far less identifiable than traditional knowledge-transfer models may suggest. Traditional knowledge-transfer models appear to be applicable, but the process is highly fluid and iterative, shaped by the unique nature of the freelancers and by the characteristics of the creative products they are developing.

Moreover, this research brought together two theoretical concepts—shared understanding and shared spaces—by highlighting the significance of establishing a shared cognitive space during the early phases of creative product development. This shared cognitive space is a new theoretical concept that incorporates features of boundary objects and is also an initial outcome of the creative development process.

Overall, the extant literature on CIs has highlighted an extensive use of boundary objects for knowledge codification in CIs, but this research’s findings were somehow contradictory. By breaking down the process of customer knowledge transfer, this research found that boundary objects are mostly utilised in the initial stages of the process and that their usage decreases after these initial stages.

This research also focused on how the dual nature of freelancers, as both artists and economic actors, had an influence on decisions regarding customer knowledge transfer. The freelancers’ dual nature appeared to play a role in customer knowledge transfer by preventing customer involvement so the freelancers could preserve their style and maintain their role as experts. In addition to these artistic-driven reasons, freelancers also blocked customer input citing economic reasons, as they aimed to pursue faster revenues. With creative products having both artistic and economic value, blocking customer input had a negative impact on the artistic component and customer satisfaction with the end product.

Further, this research critically examined the use of an accelerated speed of development in CIs. The academic literature has highlighted the fast pace of the CI sector, and this research found that actively reducing customer knowledge transfer increased the speed of development. However, in doing so, this accelerated speed of development also had a negative effect on the perceived artistic value of the final product.

Overall, this research emphasised the urgent need to better understand how freelancers operate in the context of CIs. This introduction and the three published articles shed light on how freelancers in CIs conduct knowledge-transfer activities in the context of customer involvement in product development processes. In addition, this research also highlighted a few managerial implications. One of the key aspects related to the need to use an appropriate amount of time for the creation of a shared cognitive space in the initial stages of development. Not allocating sufficient time for this activity hinders further stages of development by making dialogue difficult and damaging the overall development of creative products. Moreover, this research highlighted the importance of finding a project and personal match between the freelancer and the client. More specifically, freelancers emphasised the need to perceive the project as relevant and attractive and to have similar sensemaking processes as the client. The absence of positive matches between the freelancer and the client was also found to hinder understanding and active dialogue, thereby negatively impacting the final product.