Cornell Tech Professor Publishes Book About the Relationship Between Art and Business

Girish and Jaidev Reddy Professor of Practice Mukti Khaire’s book “Culture and Commerce: The Value of Entrepreneurship in Creative Industries” explores the relationship between art and business.

Khaire’s research focuses on entrepreneurship in the creative industries, such as art, advertising, architecture and design, fashion, film, music, publishing, and theater. In particular, she is interested in understanding how entrepreneurs create markets for new categories of cultural goods by constructing their value, while also changing consumers’ beliefs about what attributes of cultural goods are appropriate and valuable.

Description:

Art and business are often described as worlds apart, even diametric opposites. And yet, these realms are close cousins in creative industries where firms bring cultural goods to market, attaching price tags to music, paintings, theater, literature, film, and fashion.

Building on theories of value construction and cultural production, Culture and Commerce details the processes by which artistic worth is decoded, translated, and converted to economic value. Mukti Khaire introduces readers to three industry players: creators, producers (who bring to market and distribute cultural goods), and intermediaries (who critique and rave about them). Case studies of firms from Chanel and Penguin to tastemakers like the Pritzker Prize and The Sundance Institute illuminate how these professionals construct a vital value chain. Highlighting the role of “pioneer entrepreneurs”—who carve out space for radical, new product categories—Khaire illustrates how creative professionals influence our sense of value, shifting consumer behavior and our culture in deep, surprising ways. The book particularly sheds light on how the twin developments shaping our world today – digitalization and globalization – influence entrepreneurship in creative industries and by extension, change culture and society.

Book available for purchase from Stanford University Press.