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2023 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

18. The Animal Spirits of Innovation: On Companion Species, Creativity, and Olly the Airport Cat

Author : Damian O’Doherty

Published in: Debating Innovation

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

What happens when a feral cat turns up at a place of work? The turn to animal studies in management and organization studies has little to say about how this might affect human creativity and innovation at work. No doubt this silence is the product of the serious methodological and theoretical challenges posed to organization studies by the recognition that organizations are only partly made by humans. Non-human and human/non-human relations require considerable revision to our ways of thinking and working in organizations and demand new modes of attention and descriptive practice. This chapter studies the impact that Olly the Cat made at Manchester Airport in the UK and shows the extraordinary unsettling of organization that ensued. Ontologically it was no longer clear who was in charge of the organization, but this unsettling helped stimulate unprecedented levels of creativity among senior staff in the airport.

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previous chapter Peace Piece: On the Machiavellian Moment in Organizational Innovation
next chapter The Future(s) of Innovation
Footnotes
1
Anthony or Tony Wilson (20 February 1950–10 August 2007) was a well-known and sometime notorious TV presenter hosting breakthrough programs covering new culture and music on Granada TV in the UK during the 1970s and 1980s. He was one of the co-founders of Factory Records in 1978 and managed a number of Manchester-based bands. In addition to radio and television presenting he was a journalist for Granada Television and the BBC, and at various times, in no particular order, a nightclub owner and manager, impresario, film producer, and most times bon-vivant, raconteur and gourmand.
 
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Metadata
Title
The Animal Spirits of Innovation: On Companion Species, Creativity, and Olly the Airport Cat
Author
Damian O’Doherty
Copyright Year
2023
Book
Debating Innovation

Print ISBN: 978-3-031-16665-5

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-031-16666-2

Copyright Year: 2023

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16666-2_18