White paper on creativity - ebla center

Part IIobjects. In short, quality depends on conventions dictated by a few leading players onthe market in question.For fashion goods, quality is not independent of the good–valuer relationship and isbuilt on the goods–individual–community relationship. It is not exhausted in thediscovery of pre-existing quality, precisely fixed a priori, but depends on a judgement madeby consumers or users and this takes us into an economy of non-objective quality, withidiosyncratic features.For industrial design goods, conventions of quality are defined by a system assessed byinternationally recognised awards, such as the Compasso d’oro or specialised reviews, suchas Domus Academy, Abitare or Habitat and a system of implicit hierarchies defined by theclose circle of designers occupying the centre of the cultural space of design. Obviously,conventions of quality select promising young designers.The “Parkerization” of wine is a good example of the evolution of a dominant socialtaste. Parker’s modern American taste calls into question the aristocratic English tasteunderlying the 1855 classification of wine. By giving points, Parker drives sales up andcreates standardised tastes based on his own, which in turn are in line with those of thenew American consumers.There are very few sectors in which the “Italia” brand continues to be a universallyrecognised leader, apart from some cuisine and wine productions and to some extentfarm and food productions. In the international collective imagination, Italian food andItalian wine are often depicted as a kind of gift of nature, rather than the result of a longproduction process with very precise geographical roots, but also a great capacity tocombine these roots with innovation in a system dominated by the creative component.Goods based on taste“Taste goods” are those in which the aesthetic and sensorial quality dominate, theclassic example being food and wine.The taste industries, i.e. those industries supplying goods whose characteristics arefundamentally based on individual aesthetic and sensorial preferences or taste in thewidest sense, such as fashion, gastronomy, or the farm and food industry (wineproducts, cheese, etc.), are now undergoing structural transformations. The widening ofthe market has enabled suppliers of taste goods to increase production up to mass scale,changing the costs, the number of retail distributors and so on. You can buy a highqualitybottle of wine or a dish prepared by a top-notch chef, like Gualtiero Marchesi, ina supermarket in any corner of the world.WHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 91