An Interview With the Internationally Acclaimed Film Director Shekhar Kapur
We’re pleased to feature Journal of Management Inquiry‘s “Meet the Person.” Sonal Minocha, George Stonehouse and Martin Reynolds interviewed film director Shekhar Kapur, asking questions regarding his background, his thoughts on creativity, the role of education, and more.
This interview and literature review serve our purpose of providing a deeper understanding of the concept of creativity and extend its literature base through the creative practitioner lens of a film director. Driven by past research we have conducted into Bollywood (Minocha & Stonehouse, 2006), we felt that a natural progression for that work was to interview a leading creative professional from the world’s largest film industry. This has been used to develop our understanding of creativity through the perspectives developed through his experience of one of the most creative of all industries, filmmaking. This follows the tradition of Essex and Mainemelis in Journal of Management Inquiry (JMI) in 2002, when they interviewed David Whyte and presented their views on what lessons could be learnt from art, his work including his poetry. Our objective was to contribute to the understanding of creativity and innovation in business by employing Shekhar Kapur as a representative of that “different lens” through his experiences in filmmaking, made even more pertinent by Shekhar’s ability to transcend the cultural nuances of creativity in Eastern and Western contexts.