How creativity and culture have become core to economics

A UN report does neat stocktaking of the role of creativity but misses many paradoxes, writes Haydn Shaugnessy.

Has one idea captured the imagination of large corporations and economic policymakers more quickly and comprehensively than the so-called "creative economy"?

Since Richard Florida first wrote his book The Rise of the Creative Classin 2002, there have been "me-too" texts by writers claiming that creative cities are an essential venue for anybody who wants a significant career. There have been books underlining the fact that intellectual property lies at the heart of creative economies. Even Florida himself has weighed back in with a theory of creative class-war.

There is a website that posts the top five weekly online creative economy references (www.creative.org.au).

The main attraction of the creative economy seems to be the hope it gives to developed economies that they can maintain a global lead over less-developed economies through properly exploiting their own smarts.

The concept says ultimately no resource is more important than how you think or imagine. That idea is a little like men and motors. Just as every man thinks he is by far the best driver on the road, so most smart people believe they are up there with the best.

The creative economy is an idea fit for the ego of any ad man, designer, communicator, TV executive or writer.

The new UN Creative Economy Report 2008 is therefore a welcome piece of stocktaking.

The UN has quite a different perspective on creative economies.

Pointing out that the world economy is growing fast, and that many underdeveloped countries are registering growth of 5 per cent or more per annum, the UN asks how well the non-West is doing at creativity.

Figuring that people everywhere could have an equal shot at generating the next big idea, the UN believes that in the creative future, the developing world stands to benefit most.

First a few statistics. Over the period 2000-2005, trade in creative goods and services increased at an unprecedented average annual rate of 8.7 per cent.

World exports of creative products were valued at $424.4 billion (€273 billion) in 2005 as compared to $227.5 billion in 1996.

Some of this growth is accounted for simply by the growth of computing products and IT services. Most experts lump software and related services in with movie production and design as a creative occupation.

By the same token, you might well add in all educational services and in fact any job where people have to think.

My own experience of computing is that the creative moments are few and far between, though extremely important when they occur.

There is also the "IT paradox" to deal with, the fact that the many trillions that have gone into the IT infrastructure have yielded precious little economic growth.

How about factoring in the routine and huge losses that accompany large IT implementation projects?

These quibbles aside, the UN knows it is on safe ground. Clearly there is a novel feature in the modern economy and this is how the UN explains it: "In the contemporary world, a new development paradigm is emerging that links the economy and culture, embracing economic, cultural, technological and social aspects of development at both the macro and micro levels."

That kind of language doesn't inspire me as much as it might. What is inspiring is that the creative economy is being built by a generation of people, aged from 18 to 50 who are the best educated in the history of humanity.

More people are going to third-level education than ever before. Many hundreds of thousands of graduates are emerging from universities each year, many millions most probably.

This is a huge achievement and the fact that it derives from fierce nationalist competitiveness is a bearable negative when you think of how education can alter lives so positively.

There remains a paradox even here though.

We are also experiencing worse literacy rates in English-speaking countries than at any time since primary education became obligatory.

If you are creative in nature then these paradoxes are part of the fun. Straightforward theses are invariably wrong, there has to be light and shade as well as exceptions.

One might equally argue for example that creativity in the formal sense - design, audio/visual production, art - is less significant economically than the release of creative energy in "one-button publishing" (blogs) and social networks such as Facebook.

This is a paradox because the energy we feel from the new networked economy comes from what is actually quite extraordinarily low-level, mundane creativity, evidenced by automated content such as "mash-ups" and syndication and social network pages.

What we are also experiencing, it seems to me, is a deficit in the debating department.

The UN's report is a thorough examination of the creative landscape across the world, if you follow formal definitions of creativity.

It is not, however, a discursive document.

And, in general, there is not a huge amount of debate about the rise of the creative class either here or in the newspapers and magazines that report creative issues. There is comment but not real dissent nor a willingness to explore the paradoxes.

Readers of this Innovation Extrapage will recognise many of the ideas in this report.

You can usefully draw on it to support the general argument that new thinking is needed on how we generate ideas. On how we innovate in organisations, and how creativity impinges on city planning and on education.

What you won't find is the beginnings of a debate that explores the core paradoxes of our time, such as educated and illiterate, creative and mundane, or smart and dumbed down.