CHAPTER
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Analysing the creative economy 3
The formulation of policy strategies to foster the development of the creative economy at the local, national or international level cannot proceed in a vacuum. Three requirements are critical to providing the sort of information and analysis upon which sound policy can be based. These are: ■
a systematic understanding of the structure of the creative economy, who the stakeholders are, how they relate to one another, and how the creative sector relates to other sectors of the economy;
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sound methods to analyse the functioning of the creative economy and to assess the contribution it makes to economic, social and cultural life; and
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comprehensive statistics to quantify the analytical methods and to provide a systematic basis for evaluation of the contribution of the creative sector to output, employment, trade and economic growth.
An evidence base is needed to understand the nature of and potential impact for growth and change in the creative economy. Evidence comes in many forms, quantitative and qualitative. This report relies on the collection and analysis of quantitative data; in this sense, it echoes the work done by a number of national agencies to map their creative economy.1 However, while the great value of these accounts lies in the fact that they present data within a normative framework that is directly comparable with other sectors of the economy, this is also a particular weakness. It is a weakness since it assumes, or at least presents the reader with the impression, that the creative economy is precisely the same as the rest of the economy. Likewise, the gross value added, or export and import structure, is the same, as is the nature of work. Given the ongoing debates and research being carried out on the “new business models” and their impact on the organizational forms and
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strategies of the creative industries, there is good evidence for questioning such an assumption. There is no option but to present the same quantitative measures as are used for other industries; nevertheless, caution is urged in their interpretation. This chapter will highlight ways in which the creative industries seem to adopt or to occupy different organizational forms and business models. Accordingly, it is argued that this may have an impact on policy formulation. As such, it will be argued that quantitative data are necessary but insufficient for an analysis of a new and emergent sector such as the creative economy. Much more detailed work is required on the institutional forms and organizational particularities of the creative economy to engender confidence in policy prescriptions. In sum, this raises the question that researchers have been grappling with for a number of years, which is whether the creative economy is the same as the rest of the economy, if not why not, and in what ways is it different. Moreover, additional lines of inquiry are whether generic industrial policy is sufficient or a new formulation specific to the creative economy will be required. It is our view that a more nuanced understanding of the creative economy will be achieved with the collation of qualitative assessment and the analysis presented in this chapter. As a way of illustrating this point, this chapter will outline the particularities of the creative economy and their implications for the selection of tools for analysis and appropriate indicators for monitoring and evaluation.
Analysing the creative economy
3.1 The need for systematic analysis
This chapter is divided into three substantive parts. The first deals with the question of conceptualizing and describing the organization of the creative economy. The second part reviews tools of economic analysis that may be useful for the investigation of the creative economy. Finally, in part three, the value-chain model is used as a tool to facilitate analysis of the creative economy.
See, for example, DCMS (1998). C R E AT I V E E C O N O M Y R E P O R T 2 0 1 0
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