Walter van Andel – Balancing the creative business model

This PhD project takes on an exploration into the relationship between the specific context of the creative industries and corresponding organizational responses as it investigates how the environment surrounding a creative organization can create opposing demands on the organization – leading to issues in sustainability and innovative capacity. The specific environment that creative organizations face will be viewed in terms of the ‘creative biotope’ as introduced by Gielen (2010). It is composed of four domains or spheres that influence a sustainable artistic practice, with each domain containing its own ‘logic’ to achieve legitimacy: the domestic, peers, market and civil spheres. Correspondingly, each domain exudes its own influences and pressures on the creative organization on how to behave. This PhD project postulates that the business model, defined as the active operationalization of an organization’s strategy, can be used as a balancing mechanism to mitigate these tensions. Harnessing multiple tensions within a single business models is challenging because each of the opposing domains requires a different and often incompatible activity set. This, according to Markides (2013), can be framed as the ambidexterity challenge of business models, which will be a key focus in this research.

In September 2020, Walter successfully defended his PhD dissertation entitled: “Balancing the creative business model”

Walter van Andel

Promotors:
Prof. Dr. Annick Schramme
Faculty of Applied Economics

Prof. Dr. Koen Vandenbempt
Faculty of Applied Economics