Understanding Creative Business Values, Networks and Innovation

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.

Contents: Part I Values: New spectacles for Juliette?; Why bother? The expansion of care; Taking part in the existence of things: an ecological lens; Being good and doing right: a philosophical lens; Everyday skills in care: contact lenses; Seeing the right priorities: a professional lens. Part II Networks: From a competitive economy to a creative ecology?; How to make friends and influence people; Whom do I get into bed with?; The nature of relationships; Organizing coral reefs. Part III Innovation: Mozart and the innovation economy; Thinking about the way to do thinking: epistemological choices; Different methods: which tools to use, why, when and how; The flow of ideas: creative business innovation; ’The rules and peculiarities of various instruments’: innovation skills; Houses of learning: cultural organizations for cultural innovations. Part IV Summary: Making a dish of it: where is creativity?; Creative business at a transformative moment?; References; Index.

Jim Shorthose is a university lecturer, freelance researcher and network animator for the creative industries. For several years he has consulted local, regional and international cultural policy institutions and has authored several books and journal articles. His recent work has developed in the cross-over terrain between philosophy, art and design disciplines and business development to bring interesting and useful debates from within these areas to bear upon the practical issues of being creative and doing business. To find out more about his work go to www.jimshorthose.co.uk. Neil Maycroft is a Senior Lecturer in Art and Design at Lincoln University, where he currently co-directs the Master’s Degree in Creative Practice and supervises doctoral candidates. He specializes in professional creative practice development and research design and strategies. He has worked in partnership with the Nottingham Creative Network. His BA and PhD were both gained at Nottingham Trent University.