the strengthening of the creative and related industries. V. A major challenge for shaping policies for the creative economy is related to intellectual property rights: how to measure the value of intellectual property, how to redistribute profits and how to regulate these activities. The evolution of multimedia created an open market for the distribution and sharing of digitized creative content, and the debate about the protection or sharing of IPRs became highly complex, involving governments, artists, creators and business. The time has come for governments to review the limitations of current IPR regimes and adapt them to new realities by ensuring a competitive environment in the context of multilateral discourse.
Ten Key Messages
VI. The creative economy cuts across the arts, business and connectivity, driving innovation and new business models. The digital era unlocked marketing and distribution channels for music, digital animation, films, news, advertising, etc., thereby expanding the economic benefits of the creative economy. The mobile revolution is changing the lives of millions of people in the developing world. In 2009 over 4 billion mobile phones were in use, 75 per cent of them in the South. In 2008 more than one-fifth of the world’s population used the Internet, and the number of users in the South grew five times faster than in the North. However, developing countries are lagging in terms of broadband connectivity. For the creative industries, this is a constraint because many applications to stimulate creative production and e-business do not run without sufficient bandwidth. Therefore, national and regional investment efforts should be guided, in collaboration with international agencies, towards better infrastructure for broadband in the South.
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VII. The creative economy is both fragmented and society-inclusive. It functions through interlocking and flexible networks of
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production and service systems spanning the entire value chain. Today it is strongly influenced by the growing role of social networks. These new tools, such as blogs, forums and wikis, facilitate connectivity and collaboration among creative people, products and places. Pragmatic policymaking requires a better understanding of who the stakeholders are in the creative economy, how they relate to one another and how the creative sector relates to other sectors of the economy. Policies and initiatives should be specific rather than generic, and preferably not top-down or bottom-up but allowing for ownership and for partnerships involving stakeholders from the public and private sector, artists and civil society. Schemes that are more inclusive and flexible will facilitate effective and innovative measures to revitalize the creative economy. VIII. Policies for the creative economy have to respond not only to economic needs but also to special demands from local communities related to education, cultural identity, social inequalities and environmental concerns. An increasing number of municipalities all over the world are using the concept of creative cities to formulate urban development strategies for reinvigorating growth with a focus on culture and creative activities. The main principles can be adapted for rural areas and disadvantaged communities as a tool to generate jobs, particularly for youth, empower creative women and promote social inclusion in line with the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. Municipalities are therefore acting faster and more astutely than the spheres of federal government, which can be more constrained by power issues and bureaucracy. Ideally, target plans of action for the creative economy should be shaped at all levels, from the community to the municipality to the national level, independent of order. It is important, however, to reconcile cultural and social objectives with instruments of trade, technology and tourism.