Fitting In – Standing Out: Cultural Entrepreneurship and Optimal Distinctiveness in Africa and Asia

On November 20 & 21, 2025, CEDITRAA met at JGU Mainz for the workshop „Fitting In – Standing Out“, organized by Tom Simmert, Bakar Abdul-Rashid Jeduah, and Matthias Krings. The workshop brought together an international group of scholars whose work engages, challenges, and rethinks the concept of optimal distinctiveness across creative fields and world regions. Over two days of focused discussion, participants examined how cultural entrepreneurs in fashion, music, film, and dance negotiate the simultaneous pressures to remain recognisable within established conventions while developing distinctive identities, products, and aesthetic signatures.

Building on the research of our guests and our team, the workshop not only introduced theoretical perspectives on optimal distinctiveness but also connected them to empirical cases from South Korea, China, Mozambique, Nigeria, Ghana, and Uganda. The program moved across an interdisciplinary range of studies from diverse platformised cultural industries  – from mediated fashion flows between Africa and Asia, to sonic branding in West African Music and Dance, to the visual strategies of Korean cinema and Kickstarter campaigns, to the aesthetics of Wakaliwood and Nollywood.

We were especially honoured to welcome Professor Eric Yanfei Zhao, one of the leading voices in Optimal Distinctiveness research, whose work has significantly shaped contemporary understandings of organisational identity, category formation, and differentiation strategies. His presence at the workshop enriched the conversations and provided an invaluable bridge between OD theory and the concrete realities of creative economies in Africa and Asia.

Visual Design by Tanja Labs @artefont