Growth, creativity and innovation in the Nordic countries: 18 Nordic cases on creation of values through competences within creativity and business understanding

Cultural and creative competences are increasingly used as important driving forces when the business world creates growth and innovation. There is a long list of ‘best practices’ in the field, but it may be difficult for companies unfamiliar with this area to understand and to learn from those examples.

In order to make clear the growth potentials to cultural and creative businesses as well as to the business world in general, the good examples must be brought into the light. Therefore we have collected 18 cases from the Nordic Region, describing how businesses became successful, what goals and results they have achieved, and what we can learn from their experiences and strategies.

The initiative for the case collection came from KreaNord, a shared Nordic initiative under the Nordic Council of Ministers. The purpose of KreaNord is the improvement of the conditions of cultural and creative industries in the Nordic Countries. Read more about KreaNord at the back of the case collection or at www.kreanord.org.

The object of the case collection is the presentation of creative and innovative paths trodden by Nordic businesses in connection with their development of business models, concepts or new products. We hope these cases and experiences may serve as inspiration for other firms searching for the path to growth.

The case collection is made up of firms of different sizes, from different trades and sectors, and with different challenges. Common to all the cases is that they take as their point of departure the challenges of the businesses where the combination of cultural-cum-creative and businessrelated competences has generated growth. So inspiration is on offer for both traditional companies and for cultural and creative businesses.