Managing creativity in the cultural industries

Abstract

This special issue brings together a series of contributions that are exploring a relatively new interdisciplinary space -the organisation and management of cultural industries i .This opening paper provides an introduction to and a consideration of that territory; it is divided into four main sections.We begin by outlining a conceptual position on creativity and management, and how we might define the cultural industries.Our objective here is to present creativity in a broad organizational field, much in the way that innovation has recently become discussed.Second, we examine the particularity of the cultural industries compared to other industries and how issues of management, organisation and governance are problematic, particularly given the nature of their transformation, or convergence.Third, we outline the broad intellectual space for understanding creativity in a knowledge economy, and indicate how this too presents challenges and opportunities.Finally, we review the dimensions of a significant new space for interdisciplinary research (and policy making) -the organisation and management of cultural industries.We conclude by considering emerging themes from this field and by introducing the contributions from the individual papers to this special issue. Exploring creativity as a strategic business processCreativity is currently a very popular term with both the public policy and business community.In one sense this is obvious; who would aspire to be 'uncreative'?However, the recent obsession with the concept can be related to a particular set of government and corporate strategic responses to