Introduction: creativity, knowledge and innovation in virtual work

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12082
• Published date: 01 March 2017
• Date: 01 March 2017

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Editorial 1

New Technology, Work and Employment 32:1

ISSN 1468-005X

Introduction: creativity, knowledge and

innovation in virtual work

The creativity rhetoric

The content and location of work in the industrialised world have been dramatically

transformed, first through the widespread application of information technologies,

and more recently, through the Internet and new media. Entirely new types of digital,

or ‘virtual’ work have been created, new value- generating activities have emerged and

the geography of employment, underpinned by global divisions of labour, has been

recast. New types of unpaid labour connected with the consumption and co- creation

of services have emerged, and the boundary between paid and unpaid labour, under-

pinned by gender divisions of labour, has shifted, affecting both public and private

life. All these developments have been captured under the rubric of ‘virtual work’, that

is to say, ‘labour, whether paid or unpaid, that is carried out using a combination of

digital and telecommunications technologies and/or produces content for digital me-

dia’ (Huws, 2012: 3). The term covers a very wide range of tasks, activities and occupa-

tions, many of which are in the so- called creative industries or sectors, are concerned

with cultural production through established and new media, or are considered to in-

volve some other type of creative or innovatory labour content. This Special Issue of

New Technology, Work and Employment critically addresses the presence of creativ-

ity, knowledge and innovation within these emerging forms of labour.

Contemporary forms of work, particularly those involving digital technologies, are

sometimes supposed to be redolent with the potential for creativity and innovation. In

this perception, the deployment of specialist skills and knowledge are central to the

performance of digital work. In fact, ever since the formulation of the ‘Information

Society’ concept as far back as the 1970s (Bell, 1973; Webster, 1995), the notion that

work is increasingly knowledge- driven has been at the heart of much economic and

some sociological analysis of social and technical change.

The idea that the deployment of knowledge plays an increasingly significant role in

the performance of work acquired particular force with the deindustrialisation and

growth of services within advanced economies from the 1980s onwards, when use of

the human musculature was steadily supplanted by a combination of automation and

human brainpower. Technology- intensive service growth has been a hallmark of eco-

nomic development in the advanced capitalist economies during the last quarter of the

twentieth century (Miles and Hauknes, 1996), and much of this growth has been in

knowledge- intensive business services (Hauknes, 1996; Boden and Miles, 2000).

Knowledge, then, is integral to the performance of much professional service work,

and often perceived as a distinctive feature of it.

The notion of the ‘Knowledge- Based Economy’ took hold of both analytical and pol-

icy thinking in the 1990s. At the centre of this concept is the production, distribution

and use of knowledge through the expansion of ‘knowledge industries’ and knowledge

occupations (Machlup, 1962; Porat and Rubin, 1977; Foray and Lundvall, 1997).

Knowledge work, it was argued, would drive improved competitiveness, and would be

the lynchpin of economic growth: new goods and services would be underpinned by

knowledge; workers would require new skills and occupational expertise; and organi-

sations would have to innovate constantly to maintain and improve their economic

performance. Firms, sectors, industrial districts, regions and national economies—all