Leaders, managers and producers: repositioning technical communication for the creative economy

Technical communication has traditionally positioned itself as a "service profession " when the work technical communicators actually do more closely resembles the complex leadership, management and subject matter work of a creative profession. This paper presents and then analyzes a case study to demonstrate this argument then presents pedagogical implications based on the analysis. The implications include continuing to teach the discipline as it is, but also asks us to read and teach more across disciplines, to encourage workplace experiences and finally to consider relocating technical communication outside of the English department, its traditional academic home.