ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on strategic management in an arts organisation as a process to manage changes through innovative thinking and entrepreneurial actions in order to reach long-term objectives in an open system of interaction between an organisation and its environment. It considers planning as an essential function in management practice. The book offers a methodological framework and a step-by-step guide on how to elaborate a strategic document to run an organisation in the arts and culture sector over a long-term period. It highlights the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship in the arts as two basic vectors in the strategic management process. The book provides arts sector organisations and projects which include artistic elements, or are based on artistic creativity, or have an indirect affiliation with the arts, for example associations and networks, cultural research institutes and observatories and others.
