Who is Creative?

Summary

Ideas businesses, however talented, cannot exist in isolation. They depend on people whose work may not appear so glamorous, but is every bit as essential. It takes an ecosystem to support any ideas business, making it hard to say where creativity begins and ends.

Key Concepts

• There is no clear definition of the ‘creative industries’.
• We find it more helpful to classify companies by their relationship to intellectual property. We define those that mostly derive value from intellectual property as ideas businesses.
• Ideas businesses comprise a wide spectrum of companies, — from those based on technology on one end, to those that create artistic content on the other.
• Some of the fastest growing, wealthiest companies are located right in the centre of that spectrum, adding value where technology meets aesthetics.
• Technical services companies, information companies, brokers, libraries, and manufacturers support the work of ideas people.