What's the Art in the "Art of Innovation"?

by Daniel Hjorth

Business and art are two -- or some would argue, the -- primary sites where innovation happens in our societies. They are, however, also structurally ordered into a dichotomy that often has business on the "useful" side and art on the "amusement" side. In its present form, this order is not older than the changed attitude toward nature and culture that took place in the 17th century. In the 1940s, this change was given the name "The Scientific Revolution," which of course confirmed the seriousness and importance of science (controlling nature) while art was simultaneously relegated to the realm of play and leisure.