Creative industries – business as unusual
In many respects regions and cities with a high amount of creative professionals “exercise” in transformation processes. They bring the “greater world” into the region and offer its population a wealth of cultural and intellectual nourishment. Thus flexibility and innovation increase as well as the number of self-employed persons, the pessimism about the future decreases, which results in an improved “mental quality of life”, one of the main success factors for the future, writes the German trend researcher and futurist Matthias Horx in his essay “Die Kreative Ökonomie” (the creative economy).
Creative professionals have long become the key to urban competitiveness. They are more flexible and autonomous, they have a better education and are better networked than the average employed person.
Creative industries – significance and
definition
In the past decades the creative industries as a heterogeneous field of the economy, producing goods and services with artistic and creative content for the masses has increasingly become a focus of cultural and economic policy. Similar to technical innovations creative output (in the form of information goods and services) is becoming a decisive location factor of the highly developed knowledge society.
The creative potential of a region is of central significance for the competitiveness of new activities or even entire regions. Quality of life, identity-forming effects and an increased attractiveness on the international tourism market are further positive effects triggered by investments in the creative field. Not least the hopes of economic policy rest on the supposed high growth and employment potentials of this field of industry.
Source: WIFO Austrian Institute of Economic Research, ”Arbeitsplatzeffekte und Betriebsdynamik in den Wiener Creative Industries“(employment effects and business dynamism in the Viennese creative industries) by Peter Mayerhofer and Peter Huber
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