Whether we describe them as Gen Y, the Net Gen, the Millennials or the Yuk/Wows, today's young people have grown up in a highly technologised environment. They interact, engage and disengage with greater speed and choice than ever before. But are they equipped for a work future in which creativity has become the defining feature of economic life?
No longer the preserve of creative industries, 'creative capital' is needed everywhere, because novel thinking, navigation, interactivity, border-crossing and forging new relationships have all become crucial to success and productivity.
The following papers, from the Creating Value Conference (hosted by CCI, 25 - 27 June 2008, Brisbane), have been peer reviewed as per HERDC Category E1 specifications.
Download paper: Designing a national innovation system to allow the creative industries to add value
Acknowledging and celebrating new energy around critiques of Australia’s National Innovation System, this paper explores the design of an innovation system that would harness energy from the Creative Industries. The notion that the Creative Industries are an important element of Australia’s innovation system has not, it seems, been self-evident.
Since it began in early 2006, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) has rapidly developed an international reputation as a research hub humming with bright ideas about Australia’s digital future.
We propose a new definition of the creative industries in terms of social network markets. The current definition of the creative industries is based on an industrial classification that proceeds in terms of the creative nature of inputs and the intellectual property nature of outputs. We propose, instead, a new market-based definition in terms of the extent to which both demand and supply operate in complex social networks. We review and critique the standard creative industries definitions and explain why we believe a market-based social network definition offers an analytic advance.
This presentation to NESTA's Measuring the Creative Industries workshop contains a range of slides covering the data collected in CCI's Digital Industries Mapping project.
Almost all creative ventures fail, but the successful ventures can be spectacular write Stuart Cunningham and Paul Ormerod.
The creative industries are one of the most important contributors to the UK economy. So it is important that we accurately measure their contribution to economic activity. Doing so can help both policymakers and industry professionals to communicate key concepts, share reliable data and make the case for greater investment. There have been renewed attempts to estimate the true size of the creative economy. The Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Greater London Authority (GLA) both published studies in 2007.
In this paper Jason Potts argues that the definition of cultural science depends on the definition of creative industries. The problem, however, is that unlike the definition of evolutionary economics, complexity science and new cultural studies, which are also elements of cultural science, the creative industries suffer multiple non-commensurable definitions. These are reviewed and analytic implications for the definition of cultural science are examined.
Published in Cultural Science, Vol 1, No 1 (2008)
Stuart Cunningham, Jason Potts and John Banks have written the opening chapter in the forthcoming title Cultural Economy to be published by Sage in September 2008 as part of their Cultures and Globalization series.
The Cultural Economy is edited by: Helmut K. Anheier at the University of California, Los Angeles and Yudhishthir Raj Isar from the The American University of Paris.