This book reinterprets the economics of craft through a value-based and institutional lens. It moves beyond standard economic frameworks that assess crafts mainly through price, productivity, employment, exports, or subsidy. While these measures remain important, they do not fully capture the cultural, social, ecological, symbolic, and relational values that sustain craft practices.
The book critiques the paradoxes that arise when industrial, market, or welfare logics are applied to artisanal economies. It argues that crafts are best understood as shared goods: practices whose value is created through skill, memory, community, transmission, recognition, and use. Drawing on cultural economics, value-based economics, commons theory, craft studies, and Indian craft histories, it places Indian craft economies within a wider comparative context that includes Asia, Europe, Latin America, and other global craft traditions.
Organised into nine chapters, the book moves from the limits of orthodox economics to value-based frameworks, shared-goods theory, craft futures, crafts culture, business-model innovation, comparative cases, and policy roadmaps. It examines the role of recognition, remuneration, and renewal, and argues for humane business models that balance livelihood, cultural authorship, ecological care, and intergenerational transmission.
The book also offers practical tools for entrepreneurs, artisans, cooperatives, family businesses, policymakers, incubators, funders, universities, and cultural organisations. These include value canvases, shared-goods diagnostics, relational balance sheets, case-learning tools, business-model templates, and institutional roadmaps. Through these frameworks, it shows how craft enterprises can be designed not merely to sell products, but to steward value, build ethical markets, and support long-term cultural renewal.

Dr Priyatej Kotipalli is an academic, researcher, and institution builder based in India, working at the intersection of craft economies, cultural economics, entrepreneurship, and family business leadership. He is Associate Professor at Jindal Global Business School, Vice Dean and Deputy Director of IDEATE Labs and the Family Business Centre, Senior Research Fellow at IDEAS – Office of Interdisciplinary Studies, at O.P. Jindal Global University, and a Member of the Crafts Council of Telangana.