Creative Strategy: Reconnecting Business and Innovation

People tend to think of creativity and strategy as opposites. This book argues that they are far more similar than we might expect. More than this, actively aligning creative and strategic thinking in any enterprise can enable more effective innovation, entrepreneurship, leadership and organizing for the future.

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 across this false divide – from the music industry, sports, fashion, Shakespearean theatre companies, creative and media organizations and dance, as well as what we might regard as more mundane providers of mainstream products and services – to uncover the creative connections behind successful strategy.

"Creative Strategy is a talisman for those looking to take a new path"
—Matt Hardisty, Strategy Director, Mother Advertising

"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. 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

"In today's world, new thinking – creativity – is required to tackle long-standing problems or address new opportunities. The trouble is few organizations 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 organization is run."
—Sir George Cox, Author of the Cox Review of Creativity in Business for HM Govt., Past Chair of the Design Council

Chris Bilton is Lecturer in the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies and Director of the MA in Creative and Media Enterprises at the University of Warwick.

Stephen Cummings is Professor of Strategic Management at Victoria Management School, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He is widely published in strategic management; his books include Images of Strategy with David Wilson (2003) and The Strategy Pathfinder with Duncan Angwin and Chris Smith (2006).