Analysing the creative economy
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groups of the creative economy are different from those applicable to the sorts of enterprises discussed earlier. For example, large-scale commercial operations have more complex value chains, more differentiated management structures, and a larger labour force than firms at the smaller and simpler end of the spectrum. Large enterprises producing creative goods and services are often involved in areas using new communication technologies with digital applications and supplying mass consumer markets. Although the goods and services produced are classifiable as cultural products, the motivations of the firms are likely to be more profit-related than cultural in nature. Furthermore, if the enterprises are subsidiaries of larger corporations whose headquarters are located elsewhere, host countries may lose some or all of any surplus earned if profits are repatriated to the parent company. In higher-income countries, the creative economy tends to be more technologically advanced and service-oriented and the creative industries tend to be dominated in financial terms by large conglomerates. In many cases, these enterprises have strong market power in important creative industries such as digital services and software, media and entertainment, and publishing and printing, which are dominated by global corporations. The four major companies in software are all United States-based, the largest being Microsoft with profits in 2005 exceeding $8 billion. The biggest media, music, entertainment and publishing companies on a world scale are based in France, Germany, Japan and the United States, the two largest being Time Warner and Walt Disney.19
3.4.3 Public or quasi-public cultural institutions
A significant amount of the movable and immovable cultural capital of any country is held in public or quasi-public institutions such as museums, galleries, archives, monasteries, shrines, historic buildings, heritage sites, etc. In addition, these institutions are also often repositories of intangible cultural capital, as in the case of heritage locations, for example, which are inextricably bound up with their history and with the rit-
19
86
Data from the Fortune and Forbes rankings, quoted in Anheier and Isar (2007:448).
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uals and customs with which they are associated. These institutions contribute cultural output primarily in the form of services, consumed by both local people and visitors. With regard to the latter, the tourism potential of some of these institutions may be substantial. Hence, to the extent that they attract international tourists, they may be able to make a significant direct or indirect impact on the foreign exchange earnings of the country.
3.4.4
Individual artists and producers
Creative workers of one sort or another — primarily creative artists such as actors, dancers, musicians, sculptors, painters and writers — are found at the originating end of the value chain. They supply the raw creative material that may be sold as finished product directly to consumers or, more often, as inputs to the next stage in a given production sequence. Whether in a developed or developing country, the artistic content is often drawn from cultural forms and practices belonging to the country or to the local community. Despite the high levels of skill that these practitioners typically have, their financial reward tends to be relatively low. Nevertheless, the practice of the arts is likely to yield substantial cultural value, and the non-market benefits that artists generate need to be recognized and promulgated in policy strategies towards the cultural sector. What is the relative importance of these four groups of producers in the productive sectors of the creative economies of countries at different stages of development? In particular, how does large-scale commercial cultural production relate to the economies of countries in Africa and Latin America? If experience from the industrialized world were applied, it could be concluded that the large-scale, digitally oriented, mass-consumption industries could be seen as the agent for economic dynamism and structural transformation in the developing world as well. Certainly, this has been true for those developing countries already embarked on a rapid growth path such as the emerging economies of Asia; their development policy continues to provide a strong focus on promoting commercial creative industries. For the majority of the developing world, however, more widespread and more