Creative Economy: A Feasible Development Option

Table 7.3 continuedPartnership on Measuring ICT for Development: Core ICT indicators7Technology, connectivity and the creative economyUse of ICT by businessesICT sector and trade in ICT goodsSource: UNCTAD, Information Economy Report 2006: The Development Perspective, pp. 154-156. Available at: http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/sdteecb20061_en.pdf.The general impact of ICTs has been well reviewed;however, the specifics of this debate — how ICTs may havea variable impact on some activities and not others — hasbeen less well examined. It is our hypothesis that ICT developmentwill have a disproportionate impact on the creativeeconomy. The reasons for this impact relate to the specificpotential for transformation of the creative-economy productionprocesses, and in the value chain that will beanalysed in a subsequent section.ICTs have enormous power to leverage the developmentof new links in the value chain in virtually all creativeindustries, albeit at different levels. The key concept underpinningthese changes is “digital convergence”, which can beof three types: technological convergence (a shift in patternsof ownership of media, such as film, television, music andgames), media convergence 8 (allowing users to consume differentmedia at the same time using a single personal computer)and access convergence (all production and distributionof media and services are being reengineered to work onExtended coreProportion of individuals with use of a mobile telephoneProportion of households with access to the Internet by type of accessFrequency of individual access to the Internet in the last 12 months (from any location)Basic coreProportion of businesses using computersProportion of employees using computersProportion of businesses using the InternetProportion of employees using the InternetProportion of businesses with a Web presenceProportion of businesses with an intranetProportion of businesses receiving orders over the InternetProportion of businesses placing orders over the InternetExtended coreProportion of businesses using the Internet by type of accessProportion of businesses with a Local Area Network (LAN)Proportion of businesses with an extranetProportion of businesses using the Internet by type of activityProportion of total business sector workforce involved in the ICT sectorValue added in the ICT sector (as a percentage of total business-sector value added)ICT goods imports as a percentage of total importsICT goods exports as a percentage of total exports7.4 ICTs and their impact on the creative economya distributed network platform; i.e., everything is becomingavailable or doable on the Internet).Digital convergence and its manifestation throughincreasingly interlinked and interoperable online technologiesare driven by consumers and by suppliers. A reportpublished by ITU states that “the market environmentincreasingly resembles a digital ‘ecosystem’ in which companiesmust cooperate to provide jointly provisioned services atthe same time as they compete for resources and for markets.Equally, customers become suppliers and suppliers becomecustomers in evolving relationships of bewildering complexity”.9 From mobile content on demand to online artauctions, the new features of the value chain emerge at a veryfast pace.The spillover effects of these shifts in developingcountries seem to be quite limited though, owing mainly tothe fact that generalized ICT access and use remain lowerthan in developed countries. Compounding the problem is8 Jenkins (2006).9 ITU (2006).196 CREATIVE ECONOMY REPORT 2010