Pioneering Minds WorldwideOn the Entrepreneurial Principles of the Cultural and Creative Industries Giep Hagoort, Aukje Thomassen, Rene Kooyman (Eds.)

This book is a collection of the latest research on cultural entrepreneurship, done by pioneers within their own field of expertise and an international oriented focus. There are many research publications and academic oriented policy reports, but a blind reviewed publication on actual research is still lacking. With this book, that holds contributions form more than 30 authors in 17 countries, this void has been resolved.
The absence of research publications might be explained in two ways. First cultural entrepreneurship is relatively a new knowledge domain, that asks for a period of exploring best practices, formulating case studies and – more praxis oriented – developing academic educational programs (Hagoort G. , 2007). In such a climate researching cultural entrepreneurial issues on a more fundamental way has not received the highest priority of researchers, policymakers or educators. Moreover, the dynamics of the increasing cultural and creative industries (CCIs) seem to ask for pragmatic policy oriented studies, more than a research on the fundaments, concepts and principles of a new phenomenon. The second explanation has to deal with the academic interdisciplinary character of cultural entrepreneurship, with a strong focus on interactivity with professionals from the cultural and creative fields. Professionals do develop reflective competences, but are not initially interested in long term studies with its focus more on ‘Why and What’ than on ‘How’.