Mukti Khaire

Culture and Commerce

The Value of Entrepreneurship in Creative Industries

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Mukti Khaire is the Girish and Jaidev Reddy Professor of Practice at Cornell Tech and the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 280
• Erscheinungstermin: 20. Juni 2017
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 160mm x 20mm
• Gewicht: 499g
• ISBN-13: 9780804792219
• ISBN-10: 0804792216
• Artikelnr.: 47547070

Autorenporträt

Mukti Khaire is the Girish and Jaidev Reddy Professor of Practice at Cornell Tech and the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
1The Business of Culture
chapter abstract
The worlds of business and culture are seen as unrelated, even opposing.
This chapter describes why and how the two are related. Creators,
producers, and intermediaries constitute a value chain in markets formed at
the intersection of commerce (where producers, with goods for sale,
reside), commentary (discourse generated by intermediaries as well as
producers that contributes to construction of value of goods), culture
(beliefs about value, influenced by the commentary), and consumption
(acquiring goods aligned with cultural norms and therefore valued). Markets
for symbolic and new products require higher levels of commentary than
those for utilitarian and well-understood products, given the greater need
to assess and construct the value of these products. Pioneer entrepreneurs
create markets for new cultural goods by first establishing them as
appropriate and valuable to induce their consumption. This requires
changing conventions of appropriateness and value, which in turn can effect
cultural change.
2Pioneer Entrepreneurs: Creating Markets and Changing Minds
chapter abstract
This chapter describes pioneer entrepreneurs and their cultural impact.
Because market creation is influenced by commentary as well as commerce,
pioneer entrepreneurs may be new or established producers or intermediaries
in the value chain of their industries. This is a unique conception of the
entrepreneur. Consumption of cultural goods (more than other kinds of
goods) is influenced by cultural norms that define individuals' core
beliefs about appropriateness and value, as well as their sense of
identity. Therefore, pioneer entrepreneurs in creative industries face a
formidable challenge when introducing new cultural goods; often, such new
goods may not align with prevailing cultural norms, making it difficult to
create a market for them. The same challenge also gives pioneers a
significant opportunity to influence and change culture by creating a
market for new goods through generating discourse that changes cultural
norms, optimal framing, and generating consensus about the value of the
good.
3Intermediaries: Constructing Meaning and Value for Markets
chapter abstract
Intermediaries are entities-individuals or organizations-that do not have a
direct economic stake in the value of goods. Intermediaries can either
reinforce and confirm prevailing conventions of appropriateness and value
or challenge and change them. The second option results in market creation
as value conventions and norms are changed. Pioneer intermediaries may have
the greatest potential to effect cultural change; because they are
evaluators and endorsers with no economic incentive in the market, their
discourse is more credible than that of producers and therefore more
influential in changing culture. However, doing business as an intermediary
is difficult because, by definition, they cannot capture the value they
construct. Intermediaries have to adopt complex two-sided business models
and face challenges in balancing revenues with relevance and managing a
dual identity. Despite this, the potential for broad cultural impact is an
attractive aspect of being an intermediary.
4Doing Their Job: The Functions of Intermediaries
chapter abstract
This chapter systematically explicates how intermediaries construct the
value of cultural goods to better understand the entrepreneurial
implications of their functions. Three key properties of cultural
goods-high symbolism, proliferation, and subjectivity-juxtaposed against
three key valuation elements-categories, criteria, and standards-define the
specific functions that intermediaries perform. Intermediaries make
cultural goods visible through introduction, the sharing of information.
They also instruct consumers, that is, they decode the symbolic meaning and
value of the good. Finally, intermediaries perform the inclusion function,
selectively validating the quality of certain cultural goods. These
functions, although neither sharply demarcated nor linearly executed,
result in a value pyramid, where goods at the highest apex of quality fetch
either very high aggregate sales or individual prices. Operating as an
entrepreneurial intermediary-pioneering or otherwise-that performs one or
more of these functions brings different sets of challenges and has
different implications for effective market creation.
5Maximizing Influence: The Features of Intermediaries
chapter abstract
This chapter describes the prerequisites-independence and expertise-that
intermediaries must possess to perform their crucial functions, exert power
over producers and consumers, and influence the market. Independence has
structural, economic, and cognitive dimensions. An intermediary perceived
as or known to be corrupted or co-opted by creators or producers would have
no, or worse, a negative influence on value construction and market
creation for a cultural good. Intermediaries accordingly develop ways of
demonstrating their independence. For their discourse to be credible and
influential, intermediaries must also possess and demonstrate expertise.
Both prerequisites are assets of intermediaries and play a role in
maintaining their financial viability, but neither can be actively managed
nor speedily built. This has significant implications, examined in detail
in this chapter, for new intermediary ventures as well as pioneer
intermediaries.
6Creators and Producers: Making Art, Making Markets
chapter abstract
Producers are firms that have a direct economic stake in the value of the
goods they bring to market. These are distinct from the individuals who
create the good: creators, such as artists, musicians, and writers.
Creators rarely take their creations directly to market; in most cases, a
third-party firm-a producer firm-vets and collates many different creations
to present to the consumer. Elsewhere, fashion designers and chefs often
start their own firms-creator firms-that sell only their own creations. All
producers must bridge the worlds of art and business, which entails three
challenges: market making, building and maintaining trust between managers
and creators, and reputation building. Creator firms may be more likely to
introduce content innovations, and producer firms may introduce delivery
innovations, while some innovations may combine both. Inducing consumption
of these innovations requires changing beliefs, making it the most
challenging kind of pioneer entrepreneurship.
7Power and Unpredictability: Key Challenges Facing Producers
chapter abstract
Because they operate at the cusp of culture and commerce, which are two
very different worlds, producers face significant operational challenges
that increase the uncertainty they face and decrease their power balance in
the ecosystem. In particular, producers-both creator firms and producer
firms, albeit to varying degrees-are constrained by the power wielded over
them by cultural norms, by intermediaries, and by creators. The locus of
these tensions is the product that producers bring to the market and about
which they can neither create nor harbor illusions.
Entrepreneurship-pioneer entrepreneurship and otherwise-as a producer is
therefore exceedingly difficult and should be undertaken only by highly
motivated, dedicated individuals.
8Purpose and Profit: Strategies for Balancing Cultural and Financial
Imperatives
chapter abstract
This chapter explores the strategies adopted by producers, who must balance
financial and cultural imperatives to maintain viability and standing in
both the artistic and the business worlds, each of which has a different,
sometimes contradictory institutional logic. Mirroring the strategies used
by individual creators, producers attempt to balance both worlds by
maintaining varying degrees of separation between the two worlds-blending
(no separation), loose coupling or portfolio (some separation, maintained
through the production of multiple product lines), and decoupling (complete
separation through production of unrelated products or by adopting a
not-for-profit business model). Each of these strategies is differentially
appropriate for creator firms versus producer firms, and each has specific
implications for pioneer producers and new producer ventures, all of which
are explored.
9New World, Old Rules: Creative Industries in the Age of Digitalization and
Globalization
chapter abstract
Globalization and digitalization-the opening of economies across the globe
and the advent and spread of the digital medium, respectively-have made the
world smaller today. Although this new world has had positive implications
for entrepreneurs and pioneer entrepreneurs, it has had negative impacts
for incumbents in the creative industries. This chapter addresses the
question of whether rules governing the structure and functioning of
creative industries are relevant in the current context. Although
globalization has typically generated market creation opportunities for
pioneer producers and pioneer intermediaries, digitalization has not
significantly affected the creation of new categories but has instead
provided a new medium for commentary as well as commerce. Understanding how
these developments affect creators, producers, and intermediaries suggests
that the "old" rules, being foundational, are still applicable and should
be followed by firms, creators, and consumers desirous of living in a civil
society capable of rejuvenation and change.