Book Report for Creative Business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Book Report for Creative Business - Essay Example It's spawning new businesses, transforming existing ones, saving companies money, and creating wealth. It's changing the way people shop for books, cars, vacations, advice-just about everything. It's forcing companies of all sizes and types to face new competition, explore new business opportunities, and adopt new ways of conducting business. In the span of just a few years, these changes had touched every business and industry. Cameron Foote's The Business Side of Creativity: The Complete Guide to Running a Small Graphic Design or Communications Business (2002) is a landmark book that contributes to the idea of graphic designers of how they could manage their own small business in the Information Age. Starting a new business or successfully managing a small company in today's global economy could be a cumbersome challenge and it definitely requires immense creativity and willingness to exploit new opportunities. Small companies often lack the resources to buffer themselves from competition. Furthermore, once a new product or process is brought to the market, competitors need only a short time to be up and running with something similar. Thus, the biggest challenge for small businesses today is to make a product or provide a service that is hard to imitate. Foote's book is divided into five sections. ... He tackled the things one had to know in starting and running a single-person operation in graphic design. It includes the norms, standards, and appropriate expectations. There are some helpful tips strewn over like: "Just remember that the only place you'll ever find that is 100 percent free of politics is your own, single-person office. You'll have more time for personal work. When you work alone, you can work very productively" (p. 20). He reminded that the fact that one has decided to stake his or her future on freelancing shows he or she is to be a person with high energy and an entrepreneurial spirit. It also marks us as the type of person whose self worth depends on what we can do best. In Section 2 of his book, Foote tackled the pricing and the taxation part of this kind of business. This section of the book gives the readers an overview of how to charge for time, explains the preparation estimates, and keeping more of what one makes in managing a freelance designer job. In pricing, for instance, he suggested before sitting down to determine how much to charge, one must look at the big picture. Many individuals assume that pricing is the most important factor in business success. When a designer decides that "I'll make up with higher volume what I lose through lower rates", it could mean two flaws. First, working harder at lower prices often results in creative burnout. It may be financially successful, but for how long and at what price Second, a reputation for low-price work attracts smaller, less sophisticated, and more demanding clients (p. 99). In Section 3, Foote tackled the marketing and selling strategies in this type of business. He gave some tips where the opportunities are, the portfolio preparation and presentation,