White paper on creativity - ebla center

Chapter 10been little explored by countries witheven more robust economies.In this short introduction we obviouslycannot tell a story requiring asystematic approach embracing all theapplication fields of thecommunications system. We will thussimply point out that, althoughuniversity degrees in communicationssciences were eventually introduced inItaly (decades late compared to theUSA but also France), and developedvery popular, still successfulprogrammes, the creative workshops inthe sector were already pursuingexperimental methods with importantcontacts in industry (banks were toarrive late and fairly insignificantly inthe sector) and professional contactswith architectural faculties, publishing,cinema and TV. This led to theconstruction of a set of models,semiotics and an economy that may beconsidered as having “specificallyItalian features”.In the mid-1980s, when the institutionsalso finally decided to begin their owncommunications history (from publicbranding of a strongly symbolic,historic kind, usually developed in thename of tradition, to servicecommunications, modernised forms ofsignage and full-blown socialadvertising campaigns), they drew onthe recent past decanting its ideas,people and formats.Today the entrepreneurial system,institutional system and system ofsocial players consist of around 100distinct professional profiles with anemployment base (direct andconsulting) of over 300,000 people.The resources are still growing at amoderate pace or at least evolving, dueto the combined effect of a widening ofthe disciplines involved in the marketand, most importantly, the influence ofthe technological evolution and thecontinual proliferation of newoperational areas.In 2003 the Istituto Civicom (Rolando,2003) estimated that the professionalcommunications markets (excluding thenews<strong>paper</strong> and publishing sector)employed a total of 260,000 peoplewith various kinds of contracts. Thefigure of 300,000 jobs is thus based onthe expected expansion throughout2007. Jobs were divided into thefollowing categories:• Media relations: 16,000 (6,000 inthe public sphere, 6,000 in companies,4,000 in the area of consulting)• Communications and advertising:92,000 (2,000 in the public sphere,40,000 in companies and 50,000 in thearea of consulting)• Web, networks and informationcounters (excluding call centres): 86,000(41,000 in the public sphere, 20,000 incompanies and 25,000 in the area ofconsulting)• PR and events (includingconference organisation): 38,000 (5,000in the public sphere, 18,000 incompanies and 15,000 in the area ofconsulting)• Other sectors (including internalcommunications): 28,000 (3,000 in thepublic sphere, 7,000 in companies and18,000 in the area of consulting).These estimates thus yield the followingtotal jobs per sector: 57,000 in thepublic sphere, 91,000 in companies,and 112,000 in consulting.WHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 233