Creativity and the commodity in the automobile industry

This paper presents a qualitative understanding of what embedded creative employment does and the role it plays in the wider capitalist economy. A series of case studies of creative practices in the automotive manufacturing sector are used to illuminate the major ideas of the paper. Although manufacturing is typically considered to be about as far as one can get from the usual nature of creative industries, it is suggested that creative work may play a greater part than is commonly thought. The increase in specialist creative professionals employed within sectors outside the creative industries such as car manufacturing is used as evidence to reinforce the more general point that the economy is much more creative and cultural that it is given credit for, and, by extension, creative industries and creative employees play a much more integral role than some accounts would suggest.