Culture, Creativity and Innovation in the Internet Age

Freeman, Alan (2008): Culture, Creativity and Innovation in the Internet Age. Unpublished.

Abstract

bstract This unpublished paper was submitted to the May 22-23 conference on IPR at Birkbeck College, London. It analyses the distinct economic roles of culture, creation, and innovation in the Creative Industries by assessing the fitness for purpose of their statistical definitions. On this basis it proposes a method for studying the relation between creative labour and innovation.

Lax usage has made the term ‘Creative Industries’ a synonym for three distinct things: creativity, culture and intellectual alienability. I use the term Cultural and Creative Sector (CCS).

My aim is to distinguish Creative Labour, of which the sector is a specialist user, from Cultural Outputs, which the sector produces. These are found combined in the CCS in an advanced form, but they also exist separately outside it. In order to understand their wider economic impact – in particular, their relation to innovation and Intellectual Property – it is necessary to distinguish them.

I begin from the empirical reality of the Creative Industries as currently defined which, I argue, establishes it as an ‘industrial sector’, in the economically meaningful sense that it is a specialised branch of the division of labour. Its definition, however, has yet to be aligned with this reality.

This sector’s specialism is that it employs creative labour to produce cultural products. Its emergence is the outcome of two processes: a separation of mechanical from creative labour, which we inherit from the age of machines, and a revolution in service sector productivity, arising from the age of the internet.

Creative labour is a general economic resource, employed both inside and outside the CCS. The CCS is the starting point of an adequate definition, because in it, creative labour is found in its most advanced and specialised form, and because in it, this kind of labour has applied to maximum effect the new service technologies which have emerged with the internet age.

However, in order properly to assess its wider impact, creative labour has to be defined independent of the assumption that it only produces cultural products. This paper proposes such a definition. It outlines, on the basis of this definition, how the economic contribution of creative labour to service sector growth might be assessed.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: cultural economics; creative industries; innovation; internet
• Subjects: Z - Other Special Topics > Z1 - Cultural Economics; Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; O - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth > O3 - Technological Change; Research and Development; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J2 - Time Allocation, Work Behavior, and Employment Determination and Creation; Human Capital; Retirement

References

Abrahamson, M. 2004. Global Cities, Oxford: OUP.

Adorno, T and Horkheimer, 1947. The Dialectics of Enlightenment. London: Verso

Anderson, Benedict, 2007. Imagined Communities 2nd ed., London: Verso

Bakhshi, Hasan, Eric McVittie, and James Simmie. 2008. Creating Innovation: Do the creative industries support innovation in the wider economy? London: NESTA. Available at: http://www.nesta.org.uk/assets/pdf/creating_innovation_report_NESTA.pdf [Accessed March 8, 2008].

Baumol, WIlliam J. 1996. Children of Performing Arts, The Economic Dilemma. Journal of Cultural Economics 20, no. 3:183-206. http://orchestrafacts.org/Baumol.htm Accessed April 26, 2008.

Bourdieu, P. 1979 Sur la Distinction. Paris: Minuit

Bureau of the Census. 1993a. Economic Classification Policy Committee: Issues Paper No. 5: The Impact of Classification Revisions on Time Series. http://www.census.gov/epcd/naics/issues5 accessed 23/9/2007

Carey, J. 2006. What Good are the Arts? Oxford: OUP

Church, Alonzo. 1936. An unsolvable problem of elementary number theory. American Journal of Mathematics, 58 (1936), pp 345 – 363

DCMS 2007 Interim results of the Creative Economy Programme http://www.cep.culture.gov.uk/index.cfm?fuseaction=main.viewBlogEntry&intMTEntryID=3104 accessed 1/10/ 2007

DCMS. 2008. Creative Britain - New Talents for the New Economy. DCMS. Available at: www.culture.gov.uk/Reference_library/Publications/archive_2008/cepPub-new-talents.htm [Accessed April 29, 2008].

Desai, R.(2008) Review of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, forthcoming in xxxx

Dick, Philip K. 1996. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Del Rey.

Florida, R 2002. The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books

Foucault, Michel. 2001. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Routledge, 2001.

Freeman, A. 2002. Creativity: London’s Core Business. London: GLA

Freeman, A. 2004. London’s Creative Sector: 2004 Update. London: GLA

Freeman, A. 2007. Creative Industries: 2007 Update. London: GLA

Freeman, A. 2008a. ‘Is Creation an Industry?’ Creative Industries Journal, forthcoming

Freeman, A. 2008b. London: a Cultural Audit. London: LDA

Freeman, C. 1989. “The Third Kondratieff Wave: Age of Steel, Electrification and Imperialism.” Kihlstrom et al.

Freeman, C. 2007. “Innovation, Changes of Techno-Economic Paradigm and Biological Analogies in Economics.” Available at: http://www.jstor.org/pss/3502005 [Accessed April 29, 2008].

Freud, S. 2004 ‘The Future of an Illusion’ in Mass Psychology and Other Writings. London: Penguin

Frey, Bruno S. 1996. “Has Baumol's Cost Disease disappeared in the performing arts?.” Ricerche Economiche 50:173-182. http://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/riceco/v50y1996i2p173-182.html Accessed April 26, 2008.

Garnham, N. 1990 Capitalism and Communication: Global Culture and the Economics of Information. London:Sage

GBGIS (Great Britain Historical Geographical Information System) website: http://www.port.ac.uk/research/gbhgis/

Gombrich, H. (1995) The Story of Art. Phaidon.

Glynn, M. A. 2007. “Innovative Genius: A Framework for Relating Individual and Organizational Intelligences to Innovation.” Available at: http://www.jstor.org/pss/259165 [Accessed April 29, 2008].

Harvey, David. 1989. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry Into the Origins of Cultural Change. Blackwell Publishing.

Hesmondhalgh 2007 The Cultural Industries. London: Sage

Higgs, Peter, Stuart Cunningham, and Hasan Bakhshi. 2008. Beyond the Creative Industries: Mapping the Creative Economy in the United Kingdom. NESTA. Available at: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/archive/00012166/01/beyond_creative_industries_report_NESTA.pdf [Accessed March 25, 2008].

Howkins, J. 2001 The Creative Economy. London: Penguin

Hutton, W., Á. O’Keeffe, P. Schneider, R. Andari and H. Bakhshi 2007 Staying ahead: the economic performance of the UK’s Creative Industries. London:NESTA

KreativWirtschaftDeutchland Portal http://www.kulturpolitik-kulturwirtschaft.de/

Library of Congress Business Services Division 2007 Business Reference Services, issue #9, fall 2007. http://www.loc.gov/rr/business/BERA/issue9/codes.html , accessed 1/10/2007

NAICS Association. 2008. NAICS Association: the History of NAICS and More. NAICS. Available at: www.naics.com/info.htm [Accessed April 29, 2008].

O'Connor, Justin. 2007. The cultural and Creative Industries: a review of the literature. Leeds: School of Performance and Cultural Industries, The University of Leeds. Available at: http://www.creative-partnerships.com/CP_LitRev4.pdf [Accessed February 24, 2008].

OECD 1996 The Knowledge-based Economy, Paris: OECD http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/51/8/1913021.pdf , accessed 1/10/2007

ONS, 2003. UK Standard Industrial Classification of Economic Activities 2003. London: The Stationery Office. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/methods_quality/sic/downloads/UK_SIC_Vol12003.pdf , accessed 24/9/2007

ONS, 2006. Input-Output Analyses 2006. London: ONS www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_economy/Input_Output_Analyses_2006_edition.pdf.

Page, Will 2007. Is Live the Future of Music? MCPS-PRS www.mcps-prs-alliance.co.uk/monline/research/Documents/Pages%20from%20MusicAlly%20Thursday%2029%20November%202007.pdf Accessed April 24, 2008.

Perez, C., 2003. Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages. Aldershot: Elgar

Pratt, A, 2001b. Routledge encyclopaedia of international political economy, Routledge, London: Ed. R.J. Barry-Jones. Entries :Local economic development, Sectoral planning, Cultural industries, and the Technical Division of Labour

Ramsdale, Philip. 2000. International Flows of Selected Cultural Goods 1980-1998, Montreal: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, UNESCO Sector for Culture. www.unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001213/121362eo.pdf Accessed March 9, 2008

Safranski, Rüdiger. 2004. Schiller oder Die Erfindung des Deutschen Idealismus. 1st ed. Hanser.

Smith, Adam. 1982. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations : Volumes I and 2. (The Glasgow Edition) Liberty Fund Inc.,U.S.

Sony history: http://www.mediacollege.com/video/format/compare/betamax-vhs.html for a rapid summary and http://www.sony.net/Fun/SH/ for Sony’s own corporate account.

Stoneman, Paul. 2007. An Introduction to the Definition and Measurement of Soft Innovation. . London: NESTA. Retrieved April 4, 2008, from http://www.nesta.org.uk/assets/pdf/soft_innovation_working_paper_NESTA.pdf.

Thomson, G.W. 1973. Aeschylus and Athens: a Study in the Social Origins of Drama. London: Fontana.

Williams, R. 1975. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Fontana.

WIPO. 2005. Copyright-Based Industries: Assessing their Weight. Available at: www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2005/03/article_0012.html [Accessed April 29, 2008].

Zukin, S. 1995 The Cultures of Cities. Blackwell: Cambridge MA.