Innovating through craft: From happenstance to strategic culture

How does strategic culture stem from craft? This chapter investigates the complex passage from happenstance to strategic culture by tracing the migration of arte popolare – originating in the US and traveling to Italy in the 1960s, and eventually giving rise to a strategic culture adopted by Pop Art enterprises in both countries. The advent of American Pop Art at the 1964 Venice Biennale is the progenitor of this transition and explains the Italian artists' swing from artisanal matter to graphic and advertising images. This chapter also considers Italy's tradition of craft and its compatibility with the new type of art imported from the US. Understanding this compatibility in relation to the art market system at that time provides deeper insights intothe cultural marketing strategies that began with the artists themselves and continued with the Pop Art enterprises.