Creative Professional - Expansion of Scope and Study

Expansion of Scope and Study

To date, most of the information about this growing phenomenon exists in book form. Many of the ideas and mechanisms are related to changes in copyright law, as described by Lawrence Lessig and Creative Commons.

University education for creative professionals is often presented under older definitions of music, art, and related disciplines, but the processes related to creative thought, particularly as they apply to work, are found in books about cognitive psychology. Author and cognitive thinking researcher Howard Gardner has defined a variety of intelligences related to creative workers. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has described the process of creative work effectively in several books, including Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Professors in Business have also started to explore the success factors for creative professionals including Harvard Business School Professor Teresa Amabile who has studied and published research on creative professionals like author John Irving among others.

Corporate research and the development of products and services specifically for creative professionals has started to crop up as companies hire increasing numbers of creative professionals to compete on innovation. Recent changes to corporate slogans are indicative of the trend. In 2003, GE's slogan changed from "We Bring Good Things To Life" to "Imagination at Work" and Hewlett Packard adopted the slogan "Invent." Companies such as Apple, Adobe, Behance, and 37 Signals have started developing and marketing products especially for the creative professional community.