Creative Economy: A Feasible Development Option

3Analysing the creative economygroups of the creative economy are different from thoseapplicable to the sorts of enterprises discussed earlier. Forexample, large-scale commercial operations have more complexvalue chains, more differentiated management structures,and a larger labour force than firms at the smaller and simplerend of the spectrum.Large enterprises producing creative goods and servicesare often involved in areas using new communication technologieswith digital applications and supplying mass consumermarkets. Although the goods and services produced areclassifiable as cultural products, the motivations of the firmsare likely to be more profit-related than cultural in nature.Furthermore, if the enterprises are subsidiaries of larger corporationswhose headquarters are located elsewhere, hostcountries may lose some or all of any surplus earned if profitsare repatriated to the parent company.In higher-income countries, the creative economy tendsto be more technologically advanced and service-oriented andthe creative industries tend to be dominated in financial termsby large conglomerates. In many cases, these enterprises havestrong market power in important creative industries such asdigital services and software, media and entertainment, andpublishing and printing, which are dominated by global corporations.The four major companies in software are allUnited States-based, the largest being Microsoft with profitsin 2005 exceeding $8 billion. The biggest media, music,entertainment and publishing companies on a world scale arebased in France, Germany, Japan and the United States, thetwo largest being Time Warner and Walt Disney. 193.4.3 Public or quasi-public culturalinstitutionsA significant amount of the movable and immovable culturalcapital of any country is held in public or quasi-publicinstitutions such as museums, galleries, archives, monasteries,shrines, historic buildings, heritage sites, etc. In addition, theseinstitutions are also often repositories of intangible culturalcapital, as in the case of heritage locations, for example, whichare inextricably bound up with their history and with the ritualsand customs with which they are associated. These institutionscontribute cultural output primarily in the form ofservices, consumed by both local people and visitors. Withregard to the latter, the tourism potential of some of theseinstitutions may be substantial. Hence, to the extent that theyattract international tourists, they may be able to make a significantdirect or indirect impact on the foreign exchangeearnings of the country.3.4.4 Individual artists and producersCreative workers of one sort or another — primarilycreative artists such as actors, dancers, musicians, sculptors,painters and writers — are found at the originating end ofthe value chain. They supply the raw creative material thatmay be sold as finished product directly to consumers or,more often, as inputs to the next stage in a given productionsequence. Whether in a developed or developing country, theartistic content is often drawn from cultural forms and practicesbelonging to the country or to the local community.Despite the high levels of skill that these practitioners typicallyhave, their financial reward tends to be relatively low.Nevertheless, the practice of the arts is likely to yield substantialcultural value, and the non-market benefits that artistsgenerate need to be recognized and promulgated in policystrategies towards the cultural sector.What is the relative importance of these four groups ofproducers in the productive sectors of the creative economiesof countries at different stages of development? In particular,how does large-scale commercial cultural production relate tothe economies of countries in Africa and Latin America? Ifexperience from the industrialized world were applied, itcould be concluded that the large-scale, digitally oriented,mass-consumption industries could be seen as the agent foreconomic dynamism and structural transformation in thedeveloping world as well. Certainly, this has been true forthose developing countries already embarked on a rapidgrowth path such as the emerging economies of Asia; theirdevelopment policy continues to provide a strong focus onpromoting commercial creative industries. For the majority ofthe developing world, however, more widespread and more19 Data from the Fortune and Forbes rankings, quoted in Anheier and Isar (2007:448).86 CREATIVE ECONOMY REPORT 2010