Creativity has become a central concept in trying to understand the contemporary economy. It is a universally accepted strategic asset and a key issue in developing economic policy. But at the same time, this lauding of the creative economy raises many questions. What can creativity really do for us? What challenges does it pose for the management and organization of companies? And, in an age when everyone tries to be creative, what does the concept even mean? This book deals with these issues, and is an engagement with the manifold ways in which creativity emerges as energy and functions as an organizing principle in modern organizations. The book presents a wide variety of approaches to understanding one of the most critical and exciting issues in modern management, with sections dedicated to the organization of innovation and creativity, leadership and management in creative endeavors, as well as creativity and organization change.

This work offers a nuanced perspective based on empirical evidence of the role of talent and creativity for economic growth, prosperity, social and spatial inequality, and precarity in creative cities by arguing that creativity and talent need to be valued and eventually rewarded to achieve sufficient conditions for individual economic success. Shedding light on the recent momentum of a growing convergence of cultural and economic spheres in post‐industrial societies by building on a case study of contemporary visual art from interviews with commercial gallerists. Written from an economic geography and historical-institutional perspective while leveraging the analytic strength of the established repertoire of other social science disciplines this book will provide a fascinating read for economic geographers and other social scientists researching the creative and knowledge economy as well as arts professionals aiming to better understand the process of making value of contemporary visual art.

Creativity loosely refers to activities in the visual arts, music, design, film and performance that are primarily intended to produce forms of affect and social meaning. Yet, over the last few decades, creativity has also been explicitly mobilized by governments around the world as a ‘resource’ for achieving economic growth. The creative economy discourse emphasizes individuality, innovation, self-fulfillment, career advancement and the idea of leading exciting lives as remedies to social alienation. This book critically assesses that discourse, and explores how political shifts and new theoretical frameworks are affecting the creative economy in various parts of the world at a time when creative industries are becoming increasingly ‘industrialized.’ Further, it highlights how work inequalities, oligopolistic strategies, competitive logics and unsustainable models are inherent weaknesses of the industrial model of creativity. The interdisciplinary contributions presented here address the operationalization of creative practices in a variety of geographical contexts, ranging from the UK, France and Russia, to Greece, Argentina and Italy, and examine issues concerning art biennials, museums, DIY cultures, technologies, creative writing, copyright laws, ideological formations, craft production and creative co-ops.

This collection brings together international experts from different continents to examine creativity and innovation in the cultural economy. In doing so, the collection provides a unique contemporary resource for researchers and advanced students. As a whole, the collection addresses creativity and innovation in a broad organizational field of knowledge relationships and transactions. In considering key issues and debates from across this developing arena of the global knowledge economy, the collection pursues an interdisciplinary approach that encompasses Management, Geography, Economics, Sociology and Cultural Studies.

The rise of creative industries requires new thinking in communication, media and cultural studies, media and cultural policy, and the arts and information sectors. The Creative Industries sets the agenda for these debates, providing a richer understanding of the dynamics of cultural markets, creative labor, finance and risk, and how culture is distributed, marketed and creatively reused through new media technologies. This book develops a global perspective on the creative industries and creative economy; draws insights from media and cultural studies, innovation economics, cultural policy studies, and economic and cultural geography; explores what it means for policy-makers when culture and creativity move from the margins to the center of economic dynamics; makes extensive use of case studies in ways that are relevant not only to researchers and policy-makers, but also to the generation of students who will increasingly be establishing a ‘portfolio career’ in the creative industries International in coverage, The Creative Industries traces the historical and contemporary ideas that make the cultural economy more relevant that it has ever been. It is essential reading for students and academics in media, communication and cultural studies.

World-renowned urbanist Richard Florida's bestselling classic on the transformation of our cities in the twenty-first century -- now updated with a new preface In his modern classic The Rise of the Creative Class, urbanist Richard Florida identifies the emergence of a new social class reshaping the twenty-first century's economy, geography, and workplace. This Creative Class is made up of engineers and managers, academics and musicians, researchers, designers, entrepreneurs and lawyers, poets and programmer, whose work turns on the creation of new forms. Increasingly, Florida observes, this Creative Class determines how workplaces are organized, which companies prosper or go bankrupt, and which cities thrive, stagnate or decline. Florida offers a detailed occupational, demographic, psychological, and economic profile of the Creative Class, examines its global impact, and explores the factors that shape "quality of place" in our changing cities and suburbs. Now updated with a new preface that considers the latest developments in our changing cities, The Rise of the Creative Class is the definitive edition of this foundational book on our contemporary economy.

Craft and the Creative Economy examines the place of craft and making in the contemporary cultural economy, with a distinctive focus on the ways in which this creative sector is growing exponentially as a result of online shopfronts and home-based micro-enterprise, 'mumpreneurialism' and downshifting, and renewed demand for the handmade.

This book nuances our understanding of the contemporary creative economy by engaging with a set of three key tensions which emerged over the course of eight European Colloquiums on Culture, Creativity and Economy (CCE): 1) the tension between individual and collaborative creative practices, 2) the tension between tradition and innovation, and 3) the tension between isolated and interconnected spaces of creativity. Rather than focusing on specific processes, such as production, industries or locations, the tensions acknowledge and engage with the messy and restless nature of the creative economy. Individual chapters offer insights into poorly understood practices, locations and contexts such as co-working spaces in Berlin and rural Spain, creative businesses in Leicester and the role and importance of cultural intermediaries in creative economies within Africa. Others examine the nature of trans-local cultural flows, the evolving "field" of fashion, and the implications of social media and crowdfunding platforms. This book will be of interest to students, scholars and professionals researching the creative economy, as well as specific cultural and creative industries, across the humanities and social sciences.

Pushing the frontiers of the new development paradigm, this book guides debates, clarifies new themes and illustrates how the cultural resources of the developing world can become a new way of integrating into the global economy - helping to raise the voices of developing countries, widening the range of creative choices and promoting cultural diversity and economic and human development. Mixing theory, country case-studies and policy analysis this volume argues that developing countries can use their creative assets and energies as a source of economic growth - if they can better position themselves in the global economy, turning on its head the polarized debate about commerce and culture to take a fresh look at some traditional activities whose intrinsic cultural value has for too long hidden their economic worth. It includes essays from economists, lawyers and industry experts on global trade trends; digital-technology; film in West Africa; audio visuals in India; the music industry in Brazil and the Caribbean; the copyright industry in Arab countries, and policy lessons from developed countries - including sources of finance, subsidies and the role of incubators and intermediaries. Fresh and incisive, this policy lead book on one of the world’s fastest growing sectors is an invaluable resource for to economists and policy-makers alike, as well as those with an interest in industrial organization, development policy, evolutionary economics and the creative industries.

The Economics of Identity and Creativity aims to sythesize naturalistic evolutionary theory while discussing new developments in economics. The author's approach reexamines fundamental assumptions about how a capitalist economy works, from the relation between producers and consumers to the functioning of intellectual property rights. In the creative economy, the author argues, identities merge with the flow of creative action. To explain these changes, he draws upon a range of theories from analytical philosophy to biology, and from economics to sociology. The first part of the book examines the role of language in the naturalistic approach to cultural science. Hermann-Pillath draws on Darwinian evolutionary theory to map a concept of knowledge. Part Two offers a systematic approach to creativity and identity from the naturalistic point of view developed in Part One. Here the author builds a theory of creativity from the ideas of conceptual blending in the cognitive sciences. Herrmann-Pillath presents a theory of identity based on analytical philosophy, and looks at the problems in fixing the boundaries of an individual identity both in biological evolutionary theory and brain sciences. He takes the concept of identity through the current economic approaches, examining the distinction between social and personal identity. This fascinating interdisciplinary work provides a precise argument that the foundations of economics can be found in cultural science, and it has evolved to become the cultural institution at the core of the modern economy.