The Creators' Network in the Metropolitan Agglomeration : A Case Study of Ogimachi Area in Osaka City

Recently, increasing number of researchers have directed attention to creative industry and have debated a lot. The background is that creative industry tends to agglomerate in the city and the feature is expected as a new promoter of urban industry. The discussion about agglomeration recently refers to network and its various effects. In this paper, I shed light on creators' network in Ogimachi area in Osaka City from the viewpoint 'buzz' (Storper and Venables, 2004) and 'the strength of weak ties' (Granovetter, 1973). Specifically, this study classifies creators' network into two types (dealings network and non-dealings network) and examines its geographical scope and current state. The results are summarized as follows: 1. This study demonstrates that the creators' network has flexible characteristics. For example, creators flexibly rearrange their network and their positions in production process as well as expand their business field. Therefore, such characteristics of creators' flexibility would be one case of 'flexible specialization' (Piore and Sabel, 1984). The unique characteristics of the network in Ogimachi is influenced by 'subsidence of Osaka.' 2. In the creators' dealings network, the scope of creators' network is different based on who they deal with. Today geographical restriction has been eased by the development of information technology. However, to exchange various ideas and strengthen mutual trust, creators need face-to-face contact. Although creators' dealings network extends around the Kinki region, the dealings network within creators extend in the relatively narrow scope, compared with that of between clients and creators. 3. A lot of creators build a new dealings network through their own personal relationships. This is because creators tend to have acquaintance standing between themselves and potential partners or clients from the sense of security and evasion of possible risk of new dealing. Additionally, this study clarify that the geographical scope of the dealings network is different depending on the time when the dealings started. 4. In non-dealings network, face-to-face contact enables creators to cooperate with other creators who are in different fields, and it helps them sharing tacit knowledge as well as being highly motivated. On the other hand, it has another effect that exposes creators to screening by letting them exchanging the information concerning other creators. Based on all the results above-mentioned, it is clear that 'buzz' is effectively working in the both of creators' dealings and non-dealings network. Moreover, it is through not only 'strong ties' but also 'weak ties' that the creators form their dealings network. Therefore, there is a big advantage of the expansion of the creators' network, and this is a great factor to form the creators' agglomeration in Ogimachi.