By considering strategy as a creative process (and vice versa), the authors define ‘creative strategy’ as a mindset which switches between opposing processes and characteristics, and which drives every aspect of the business. The authors draw experiences and cases from the music industry, sports, fashion, design, film, Shakespearean theatre companies, creative and media organizations, science labs and dance, as well as from successful corporations such as Apple, Ford, IBM and Google, picking out the unseen connections which drive innovation, entrepreneurship, leadership and organization – the four essential elements of creative strategy.  Several of the models and cases in the book have been developed through teaching on the MA in Creative and Media Enterprises. The book builds on Chris’s previous research on the relationship between management and creativity. 

“Creative Strategy is a talisman for those looking to take a new path”

– Matt Hardisty, Strategy Director, Mother Advertising. 

“In today’s world, new thinking – creativity – is required to tackle long-standing problems or address new opportunities. That’s true both of businesses operating in an increasingly tough and competitive environment, and of public sector bodies struggling to meet greater expectation within tight financial constraints.  The trouble is few organisations understand how to foster and apply creativity, at least in any consistent manner. This book provides new insights into just how that can be done.  It moves creativity from being just the occasional, and fortuitous, flash of inspiration, to being an embedded feature of the way the organisation is run.” - Sir George Cox, author of the Cox Review on Creativity in Business for HM Government, former Chair of the UK Design Council

"It has been said that business is a hybrid of dancing and calculation—the former incorporating the creative within a firm, the latter,  the strategic.  Bilton and Cummings show how these apparently contradictory processes can be integrated to create value beyond that possible for each separately.  Their insights about how firms can create to strategize and strategize to create are informative for managers and management scholars alike."  - Jay Barney, Professor and Chase Chair of Strategic Management, Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University 

Chris Bilton is the director of the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies. Stephen Cummings is Professor of Strategic Management at Victoria Management School, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Creative Strategy is available now on Amazon, or direct from the publisher.