Understanding Creative Business

From authors well used to operating at the various interfaces 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. 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.Jim Shorthose and Neil Maycroft have organised the text around three main themes:-Values - considering how ethical and moral philosophy can help to articulate the alternative motivations that often animate creative practice, contribute to a practical ethics for creative business and how these value orientations might contribute to the wider debate about social and ecological responsibilities within business and public policy;Networks - exploring the way creative business practices often coalesce around emergent and self-organized network collaborations and the degree to which this signals alternative approaches to business organisation, management and entrepreneurship that can compliment mainstream business discourses and public policy formulation;Innovation - exposing ways in which creative business can professionalise research through greater epistemological and methodological clarity, develop and sustain routes to growth through 'open' collaborative innovation and the lessons these approaches hold for more general business innovation and policy engagements with the public domain.Written using accessible language, case studies and practical examples, this book is a useful professional development guide for students, educators and established practitioners within all aspects of the creative industries as well as professionals working within cultural policy, arts and cultural management. It is relevant to anyone concerned with business, management and organisational studies and will be of interest to academics researching the cultural economy, cultural policy, new directions in business studies and the sociology of creative working practice.