Cases in Creative Entrepreneurship
University of Amsterdam
Exam Document
Contains:
Key messages (header)
Key points and links between articles (bullets)
Concrete examples (sub-bullets)
For every week.
,Theme 1: “Artistic production”
1. Creative industries influence practice in other industries.
a. Lampel et al. (2016)
i. The creative industry shows that celebrities can legitimize organizational
and business practices by conferring star status on the firms they back,
using processes that are mysterious to both outsiders and arguably
themselves (celebrity cultures).
1. For example, in the same way that Tom Cruise can legitimize
movies, star firms can legitimize VC firms.
ii. The creative industry shows the possibility of sharing production and
distribution processes between variously coordinated organizational
units, also belonging to different firms (value chain disintegration).
iii. The industry places importance on customer product/service experience
(experience economy & goods). The utilitarian, use value, of a product
plays a decreasing role in competition, and creating experience is
becoming progressively more important.
1. For example, in the same way that curation was associated with
art galleries, today curation has become a vital intermediate link
between consumers and their product experience.
iv. The industry started the war for talent and the casualization of labour
(flexible careers and self-employment).
1. Specifically, in the creative industries, the search for the few
exceptional individuals that could deliver success and the
boundaryless, project-based careers have influenced practice in
other industries.
v. Creative industry organizations are pathfinders for other industries,
because of their strategic use of intangibles, innovation relying on their
questioning of established logics and categories, their management of
(creative and technical) talent, their balancing of idiosyncratic individuals
with team cohesion and their reliance on networks - inside and outside
the organization.
2. Artists face competing career orientations, which may lead to self-destruction.
a. Bradshaw & Holbrook (2007)
i. There are competing career orientations arising from the contradictory
demands for musicians.
1. On the one hand, musicians must produce aesthetic experiences
for an audience of experts or devoted fans (artistic orientation).
a. This can lead to bohemia: refers to musicians or other
artists who perform primarily for themselves as expert self-
consumers seeking to maximize their own profound
aesthetic experience as an audience for the consumption
of their own playing.
2. On the other hand, musicians must earn cash in the mass market
constituted by non-experts (commercial orientation).
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, a. This can lead to alienation: refers to music made purely for
the commercial pursuit of a monetary reward and aimed at
an audience of non-expert consumers who have no special
knowledge of the art form, who are cultivated for the
dollars they can provide rather than for the sincere
appreciation they can bestow, and who will respond
favourably to the music only if it is dumbed down in ways
that make it easily accessible.
3. Given that the market is geared to romantic expectations and
given that the market pushes the artist past the need to scuffle to
make a living, they may demand an additional component of self-
destruction (Chet Baker).
a. Scuffling: preserving a degree of artistic integrity while
managing to make ends meet in a way that will avoid
starvation.
b. Positive about destructive behavior: it may lead to
marketing advantages the tale of the self-destructing
musician continues to fascinate and inspire.
3. The means of constructing recognition and renown depend on the structure of cultural
markets.
a. Dubois (2012)
i. The structure of markets correspond to that of reputations, which array
themselves according to the two stages of recognition and renown.
1. Recognition is the reputation an artist enjoys within his or her
original world of art. It occurs in small, specialized circles where
the economic power of businesses counts for little.
2. Renown is the extension of the artist’s reputation beyond his or
her world of art. Renown comes to the artist whose name goes
beyond the circles of the initiated to enter into history, that
arbiter who “assigns recognition to posterity/future” (Heinich,
2005).
ii. Evidence shows that selective matching - the association with high-status
partners - proves the most efficient mechanism for building reputation, as
long as the artistic conventions put into play are rather widely shared. In
addition, other reputation-building mechanisms such as awards, criticism
and media coverage, and poetry anthologies have an important role to
play, and so they too inform this inquiry. Thus, the market for renown is
very selective, and welcomes few authors and few publishing houses.
1. These companies remain in their own status of providing
recognition versus renown, because of their way of doing
business. Whilst the smaller firms may publish anything they
deem interesting (and potentially provide recognition), the larger
firms may be more critical and only publish successful artists (and
potentially provide renown).
2. Status and reputation attract the best-known poets to the
publishers leading the poetry world, and their choices are often
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