Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work

For artful makers, customers are integral to successful

making—“co-producers,” to use an expression that has

acquired recent popularity in business research literature. The

artful maker never stops reconceiving the product because he

or she includes an ever-changing customer as material and as

part of the process. The product itself isn’t a single thing you

can point to or count. It’s the totality of the interaction among

the made thing and whoever experiences it. This interaction

might include industrial replication of an object for sale.

Automakers use industrial methods when they make cars, but

they increasingly conceive of their product—appropriately ...