Interview Elias Carayannis
Anja Seipenbusch-Hufschmied: Could you tell me something about the ARIS project?
Elias G. Carayannis: This has been a great experience and a wonderful opportunity to look in a systematic and substantive way into issues that are at the interface of art, economy and society and particularly creative economy and society. Our work together has grown into a book series that we are publishing with Springer under the title Arts, Research, Innovation and Society. The co-editors of the series are Rector Gerald Bast and myself, and also David Campbell.
The discussions and interactions leading up to the publishing project resulted from my introduction to Dr. Bast by Dr. Campbell, which took place in October 2012. I had been working with Dr. Campbell for the last ten years or so on a number of different projects. At the time Dr. Bast was already interested in producing and publishing a series of books about arts.
I had already edited several book series, scientific journals and also an encyclopedia bringing together issues of creativity, invention, innovation and entrepreneurship as well as science, technology and economic development. Some of them were done with Springer, but also with other publishers, such as Palgrave Macmillan, Edward Elgar and others. Dr. Campbell, as a result of our prior work together, thought it would be a good idea to introduce us and propose that we collaborate and explore whether we could co-edit a series.
Of course I became interested immediately, and we started interacting to develop a proper thematic focus, a title and the ingredients, if you will, the conceptual and intellectual footprint of the series. We experimented with different names, and one which I proposed because I also find it phonetically appealing was ARIS: it brings together and connects arts with society, but also, at the heart of it, with research and innovation. So if you look at this, it actually could be arts and society connected through research and innovation.
These are not the only links, but we are interested in exploring the relationship of arts to society, and the role and presence of arts in society with regard to possible current and emerging views and trends on research and innovation. And that brings us right back to the issue of knowledge and creative economy and society: it is very important whether we look at this from the perspective of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, or in a more pure sense, trying to understand the nature and dynamics of the arts, and fields related to the arts today.
One might even look at the role and the nature and dynamics of the political regime within which arts, research, innovation and society exist, operate and evolve. These issues are reflected in the questions that define what the book series is about, and the call for contributions to the ARIS project once again, the acronym stands for Arts, Research, Innovation and Society includes questions like: Could and should artists be researchers? How are the systems of the arts and sciences connected or disconnected? What is the position and status of the arts in defining the terms progress and development?
ASH: Could you describe the main themes that will be addressed in the first book?
EGC: The inaugural volume will have contributions from a number of people, both academics and practitioners. This has always been our focus and our interest: an approach that integrates multiple viewpoints. In particular, it reflects a concept that we developed with Dr. Campbell a few years ago, which we call the Quadruple Helix Innovation Model.
This model is oriented toward bringing together and linking government, university and industry, both through top-down policies and bottom-up initiatives growing out of civil society. The idea is that policies should be further fine-tuned, shaped and evolved in fact made more intelligent and effective by civil-society-based actions and interactions with government, university and industry.
Within this context, we will try to include contributing authors from all four areas, if possible. In this first book we have university contributors, including the Angewandte (The Vienna University of Applied Arts), but also people who are working with the United Nations Development Program and the Inter-American Development Bank. Among the other participating universities are Columbia University and Tsinghua University in China. The books' themes are the essential ingredients and elements of ARIS: What insights arise from observing the dynamics, interactions and results of arts from a research and innovation point of view?