The rise of the Trojan horses in the creative industries

Abstract

This article examines perception gaps in the creative industries and the manifold implications for practitioners and policy makers working in and with this sector. This article illustrates how certain belief systems create different realities for entrepreneurs, for business development agencies supporting them and for strategists shaping the political agenda for the creative sector as an engine for wealth generation and employment. Each of the three subsystems has its own specific perception of what it means to manage and sustain a successful creative business. The Trojan horse effect is a consequence of this specific circumstance. It describes why and how creative entrepreneurs mimic the language of business as we know it and what can be done in order to get to more differentiated and more sustainable business‐support interventions in the creative sector.

Keywords:

• creative industries
• organizational culture
• cultural due diligence

Notes

1. T‐shirts and suits: a guide to the business of creativity by David Parrish addresses various opportunities on how to integrate creativity and business, and challenges the commonplace contradiction between both terms (Parrish 2007).

2. The term cultural DNA has been used by other organizations and in different context too. Examples are available from: http://www.marketplacemasters.com/newsletter/issue11-march2005.html and http://www.resurgence.org/magazine/article2349-CULTURAL-DNA.html.

3. Richard Florida’s creative class definition encompasses approximately 50 million professionals in the USA that he considers as the driving force for future economy.

4. Surowiecki (2005) argues in his book that under the right circumstances groups can outperform the smartest individuals within the very same group when it comes to problem solving.

5. The ‘Idea Machine’ is a standardized creative process for groups developed by Nadja Schnetzler which consists of four phases: generation, condensing, management and selection (Schnetzler 2005).

6. These interventions are summarized in ‘MindScapes – A Strategic Guidebook for Professional Creatives’. The manuscript is being edited for publication in 2010.

7. Appreciative inquiry is an organizational development process based on a certain approach of asking questions and engaging people in order to discover and utilize intangible assets in an organization.