Understanding Creative Business : Values, Networks and Innovation

Understanding Creative Business bridges the gap between creative practice and mainstream business organisation, entrepreneurship and management. It discusses the effective positioning of creative practice within the contexts of professional and business development, cultural policy-making priorities and the wider cultural economy. This is more than simply a practical ''how to'' guide book. It explores new theory and includes primary research to contribute to emerging debates between traditional and alternative models of business organisation and suggests what the broader field of business and management studies can learn from the informal organisational forms and working practices of creative industries networks.

From authors used to operating between the commercial, public and independent sectors of the mixed cultural economy, Understanding Creative Business bridges the gap between creative practice and mainstream business organisation, entrepreneurship and management. Using stories, case studies and exercises it discusses the positioning of creative practice within professional and business development, cultural policy-making and the wider cultural economy, and suggests what the broader field of business and management studies can learn from the informal structure and working practices of creative industries networks. Consideration is given to how ethical and moral value orientations animate creative practice and how they play into the wider debate about social responsibilities within business and public policy. The authors also explore the way creative business practices often coalesce around emergent and self-organized networks and how this signals alternative approaches to management, entrepreneurship, business organisation and collaboration. Above all else this book is about relationships; the practical examples expose the ways creative business can professionalise research, develop and sustain routes to growth through ''open'' collaborative innovation and the lessons this holds for more general business innovation and policy engagements with the public domain. Written in accessible language, this book will be useful to researchers, students, educators and practitioners within the creative industries; to those working within cultural policy, arts and cultural management; and to all with an interest in management and leadership.