At its heart this book is about innovation and the innovation process. On the way, it considers culture and the cultural industries, aesthetics, creativity and the creative industries, and a number of other similar topics.

Much of the existing economic literature on innovation has taken a particularly technological or functional viewpoint as to what sort of new products and processes are to be considered innovations. One of the key things this book shows is that there is a type of innovation, here labelled "soft innovation", primarily concerned with changes in products (and perhaps processes) of an aesthetic or intellectual nature, that has largely been ignored in the study of innovation prevalent in economics. Examples of innovations that, as a result of this refocusing, are here placed at the centre of the analysis include: the writing and publishing of a new book, the writing, production, and launching of a new movie, the development and launch of a new advertising promotion, the design and production of a new range of furniture, and architectural activity in the generation of new built form designs. The realisation of the existence of soft innovation means that, not only is innovation more widespread than previously considered, but that it may also take a different form than commonly considered.

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