The book is an innovative compilation of papers that explore the relationship between cultural features and entrepreneurship. The relative stability of differences in entrepreneurial activity across countries suggests that other than economic factors are at play. The contributions to this edited volume deal with the foundations of entrepreneurship and with the effects of different cultural settings on the incidence and success of entrepreneurs. Topics are individual decision making in a cultural context, regional aspects of entrepreneurship, cross-country differences, and the influence of culture on entrepreneurial activity.

Art and business are often described as worlds apart, even diametric opposites. And yet, these realms are close cousins in creative industries where firms bring cultural goods to market, attaching price tags to music, paintings, theater, literature, film, and fashion. Building on theories of value construction and cultural production, Culture and Commerce details the processes by which artistic worth is decoded, translated, and converted to economic value. Mukti Khaire introduces readers to three industry players: creators, producers (who bring to market and distribute cultural goods), and intermediaries (who critique and rave about them). Case studies of firms from Chanel and Penguin to tastemakers like the Pritzker Prize and The Sundance Institute illuminate how these professionals construct a vital value chain. Highlighting the role of "pioneer entrepreneurs"—who carve out space for radical, new product categories—Khaire illustrates how creative professionals influence our sense of value, shifting consumer behavior and our culture in deep, surprising ways.

Even though the study of innovation and entrepreneurship is a diverse, multi-disciplinary endeavour, the role of culture is often neglected or under-emphasized. Building on the cultural turn that has swept across the social sciences and humanities over the past couple of decades, Culture, Innovation and Entrepreneurship provides cutting-edge theoretical and empirical insights about how culture shapes innovation and entrepreneurship. It features novel contributions that enhance our understanding about a variety of important theoretical issues related to symbolic management, framing, legitimacy, optimal distinctiveness, institutional logics and the dynamics of cultural entrepreneurship in and across organizations. This book also addresses a diverse range of topics such as the design of craft goods, the creation of the Guggenheim museum, entrepreneurial ecosystems, open innovation, crowdfunding, the mafia and grand challenges. The chapters in this volume will be of interest to a diverse array of scholars, from those interested in entrepreneurship and innovation to cultural studies, contemporary social theory, organization studies and management. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Innovation: Organization and Management.

The purpose of this book is to examine the nature of organizational innovation and change by looking at the complex interplay between entrepreneurship, innovation and culture.

Women’s entrepreneurship is an effective way to combat poverty, hunger and disease, to stimulate sustainable business practices, and to promote gender equality. Yet, deeply engrained cultural norms often prescribe gender-specific roles and behaviors that severely constrain the opportunities for women’s entrepreneurial activities. This excellent new volume of work from the Diana Group explores this paradox.

This book seeks to widen perspectives on entrepreneurship by drawing attention to the diverse and partly new forms of entrepreneurial practice in Africa since the 1990s. Contrary to widespread assertions, figures of success have been regularly observed in Africa since pre-colonial times. The contributions account for these historical continuities in entrepreneurship, and identify the specifically new political and economic context within which individuals currently probe and invent novel forms of enterprise. Based on ethnographically contextualized life stories and case studies of female and male entrepreneurs, the volume offers a vivid and multi-perspectival account of their strategies, visions and ventures in domains as varied as religious proselytism, politics, tourism, media, music, prostitution, funeral organization, and education. African cultural entrepreneurs have a significant economic impact, attract the attention of large groups of people, serve as role models for many youths, and contribute to the formation of new popular cultures.

This book explores the lived experience of cultural entrepreneurship examining the challenges associated with cultural labour including the insecurities of managing precarious working conditions. Drawing on interviews conducted with cultural workers, Cultural Entrepreneurship focuses on how individuals articulate their experience of entrepreneurship in the cultural and creative industries. Noting the importance of place, the local cultural milieu is examined as a means of situating entrepreneurial practices through cultural and enterprise policies, local networks, and significant relationships. Within this framework, the cultural entrepreneurs’ stories reveal means of subverting or re-interpreting identities and the possibility for ‘rethinking cultural entrepreneurship.’ Aimed at researchers, academics and students investigating cultural entrepreneurship, cultural policy and cultural labour, Cultural Entrepreneurship will additionally be of value to creative industry consultants, cultural policymakers, and those setting up creative enterprises. Researchers from fields such as geography, investigating different aspects of the cultural industries in relation to cultural policy and place, will also find this book to be a useful contribution.