This study explores the identity work carried out by three female owner‐managers in creative industry businesses, identified in Government reports as a discriminatory industrial sector for women in the UK. Through the development of narratives by the owners and other participants, observation of practice and review of online and offline materials, three cases emerged. These showed overlapping, different identities developed and performed through identity work. Each presented rational and logical persona as business leaders despite observation showing extensive use of intuition and gut feeling in both creative and entrepreneurial aspects of the business. Intuition and gut feeling were seen as inappropriate at work as they belonged to the home sphere, emotionally based and therefore automatically unreliable. While occupying male stereotypes and avoiding the female realm of emotion at work, these women expressed femininity through their emphasis on the maternal, ‘being a good mother' as a desired ideal being embedded in work as well as home practice.

Purpose The decline of the British public house (pub), well documented over the past three decades, is often linked to detrimental social and economic conditions in communities. The purpose of this study was to explore brewery responses to turbulent market conditions for the pub trade, with a focus on innovation through design. Design/methodology/approach A longitudinal, qualitative study was conducted over 12 months, with 4 months of close participant observation within the company, to explore the experiences of a design team located within a medium-sized UK brewery. Findings The “pubscape” emerged, extending and augmenting earlier models of the “servicescape”, driven by an entrepreneurial shared vision recognising the importance of design and innovation in delivering the modern pub. Research limitations/implications A single case – one brewery – formed the basis for a longitudinal qualitative study, with the associated benefits and disadvantages typical of single case research in providing insights rather than measurable outcomes. Other cases and other research methods would allow testing of ideas, rather than exploration, and generate different perspectives. Practical implications The research indicates the value of adopting an entrepreneurial approach to address challenging trading conditions and shows the practical role that design can play in rethinking service offerings to fit consumer needs and aspirations. Originality/value New insights into modern pub management have emerged from this study, positioning design innovation as a route to delivering successful British destination pubs by innovating while retaining traditional brand values and local identity markers, using the “pubscape” as a specific way to envisage innovative servicescape environments.

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This paper attempts to describe some of the cognitive aspects of a fashion design activity and associate them with a general technological workplace. Within this, a fashion designer is seen as a creative individual who will acquire and utilise knowledge by using her intelligence to form concepts. The research was prompted by the fact that little is published about fashion garment designing; in this it may be paralleled with architectural practice research conducted over 25 years ago. Therefore a theoretical view of fashion designing is described based primarily on other activity models. A practical CAD experiment carried out with BA Honours Fashion Design students revealed some interesting facts about aiding the creative fashion design process with a computer. This involved simply comparing traditional designing with popular clothing pattern manipulation software used on a personal computer. A set of general principles for interfaces is derived from a linking of design theories with the experiment.

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