North Carolina Perspectives: Realizing the Economic Potential of Local Creative Economies

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North Carolina PerspectivesRealizing the
Economic Potential of Local Creative Economies

• Sarah ButzenRegional Technology Strategies
• ARDI Leadership SummitBoone, North
  CarolinaAugust 11, 2008

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What We Talk About When We Talk About the
Creative Economy

• Creative economy ? creative class
• Focus source of competitive advantage
• Unique aesthetic intellectual property and
  qualities

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When people talked about innovation in the 90s
they invariably meant technology. When people
speak about innovation today, it is more likely
to mean design. Consumers, who are choking on
choice, look at design as the New
Differentiator. Business Week , 7-4-05
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Creative enterprises include firms in which

• art, design, or culture is the product
• art, design, or culture defines the product or
  service
• art, design, or culture is the distinguishing
  feature or competitive advantage of a product or
  company

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Key Creative Economy Industry Segments

• Design
• Film and media
• Heritage and preservation
• Literary and publishing
• Performing arts
• Visual arts and artisan crafts

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Best Practices Creative Firms

• Artisans Doors
• Alessi
• Kohler Co.
• Munro Shoes
• Apple
• Thos. MoserCabinetmakers

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The Case for Creativity Competitive Advantage
Has Changed

• 1960s 1970s Making things cheaper
  Advantages are Cost and Functionality Division
  of labor, MTS, mass production
• 1980s 1990s Making things better
  Advantages are Quality Delivery TQM, JIT,
  flexible specialization, automation
• 2000s Making better things
  Advantages are Differentiation
  AuthenticityAesthetics, customization, design,
  originality
• 2000s Making better things here

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Creative Inputs The Ultimate Place-Based Asset

• Every place has creative, cultural, heritage
  assets
• Creative inputs connect products with these
  assets
• Goal product creates an emotional bond between
  buyer and place
• Result resistance to globalization

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North Carolinas Creative Economy

• 147,000 jobs in creative economy industries
• 11 growth since 2002
• 5.5 billion in wages
• Misses all design-oriented manufacturing
• Arts and design workers only factor found to
  independently influence tourism
• Median income and population growth are
  associated with proportion of arts and design
  workers

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Growth in NCs Creative Self-Employment,
20022006
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The Limitations of Data

• Most public sources produce significant
  undercounts of creative activity
• Louisiana has only 90 musicians?
• Carrboro, NC has only one?
• Flying under the radar
• Non-/under-reported
• Second job
• Self-employed
• Embedded in other industries
• Too small to see

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Benchmark Practices Connecting to Markets

• Siler City, NC Arts incubator thats
  revitalizing downtown
• HomeGrown HandMade day-trip trails that package
  a regions arts, crafts, cultural, and heritage
  sites
• ACENet works with artisans to give ag-based
  products a special identity through art, design,
  and stories.

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Benchmark Practices Community Colleges

• Borough of Manhattan CC created multimedia
  program to cultivate creativity in IT students
• Haywood CC teaches both the craft and business
  ends of artisanship
• Bellingham Technical College in WA annual
  welding rodeo
• Furniture College at Letterfrack Galway-Mayo
  Institute of Technology incorporates Scandinavian
  design principles (and imagination) into the
  Irish furniture industry

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Benchmark Practices Art Means Business

• EnergyXchange uses methane from six-acre dump
  area to power glass and ceramic studios,
  horticulture, galleries
• Design Shannon a network that provides design
  expertise and consulting to firms in Shannon,
  Ireland
• Second home industry
• HandCrafted Home Renaissance
• Craft training for construction workers

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Bottom Line Creativity Is Organic

• What policymakers cannot do create a creative
  economy from scratch
• What policymakers can do
• Education incorporate arts into K-12 and beyond
• Workforce make the workforce structure work for
  creative workers
• Connections build bridges between creative
  enterprises and infrastructure and rest of local
  economy
• Value communicate and promote the value of your
  communitys creative assets
• Make the creative economy a focus of economic
  development efforts

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• Sarah Butzen
• www.rtsinc.org
• butzen_at_rtsinc.org