Creative organizations are those that rely on highly innovative products and processes to create opportunities in a market where none existed. Such organizations can also be considered to be entrepreneurial in nature. Several scholars including and have acknowledged that corporate entrepreneurship in creative organizations can be effectively utilized to competitively position an organization and transform not only the firm itself, but also its environment such as the market, competition, and industries, through the identification, creation and exploitation of opportunities.
In the context of a globalized corporate environment, the supply chain of a company forms a crucial part of an organization’s competitive strategy and is a major deciding factor of its success. While companies engaged in the business of common products and services have the luxury of following tried and tested best practices in supply chain management, these cannot apply to creative firms that thrive on the uniqueness of their products. Innovative products face several challenges such as unpredictable demand, uncertain life cycle, inability to swiftly produce variants of the product and volatile technological dependency with vendors . As such, the supply chain of a creative firm needs to be extremely flexible and adaptable in order to cope with fluctuating demands of the product.
Similarly, the organizational designs of creative firms too face a tremendous degree of uncertainty. As a result of the innovative and novel nature of its products, a creative firm often cannot rely on standard business models to manage its operations. The inventive nature of its product is reflected in the novelty of its supply chain and organizational design. As such, the leaders of the firm initially lay great emphasis on building their repute in the market in order to survive. They have also been known to use their entrepreneurial skills to shape the market according to the needs of their product rather than adapting the product to market conditions. The efficiency of the creative company’s organizational design and supply chain, hence, play a pivotal role in establishing its position in the market.
Creative organizations face further challenges when operating in international markets. To begin with, culture is a major influence on consumer demand within a given geography. For example, the level of competition already existing in the industry, the preference level of consumers for foreign goods, the openness of government rules and regulations in favor of foreign companies operating in the country, the willingness of consumers to test innovative products and the income they have at disposal to purchase such products, all go a long way in determining the demand that can be expected for an innovative product on foreign shores.
Further, the practicability of a creative firm operating in or supplying to a foreign location is a challenge by itself. As discussed, the success of the organization depends greatly on the flexibility and agility of its strategies to adapt its supply chain and organizational design to meet fluctuating market environments. To be able to predict changes in consumer demand and other market factors, and coordinating with supply partners to accommodate changes to be made to its supply chain poses risks associated with timeliness and cost effectiveness. Should alterations to its supply chain management not take place in time, the entire effort could fail, derailing the creative organization’s functioning in a foreign country. As such, a creative organization functioning in an international arena needs to be specifically agile in its strategy and implementation.
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