Cultural diffusion: entrepreneurship in the creative industries
So how do you go about turning creative ideas into a business? It's not as if you're just making a product, is it? How do you attract people to creativity and make some money our of it?
(Kevin, founder of Loudmouth Music)
Creative entrepreneurs are diverse, ranging from self-employed artists to owners of global businesses (Bjorkegren, 1996). The growth of the creative sector beyond state-subsidised arts is largely a result of creative entrepreneurs identifying opportunities to provide cultural prod¬ucts, services or experiences, and bringing together the resources to exploit these as enterprises. Many graduates have set up creative businesses, but often struggle to make them viable.
Cultural diffusion is a distinctive approach to running a creative enterprise through applied creativity. The concept is used in this section to explore the social and creative processes of interaction between the creative enterprise and its audience or customers, to show how the creative enterprise can work successfully as a business in the cultural econ¬omy. The five key processes of cultural diffusion in creative enterprises are outlined and this framework is used to analyse a case of a creative enterprise. Questions based on the five processes of cultural diffusion are included to help you apply the concepts to early- stage and existing creative ventures.