Michael D. Moberly December 28, 2009
‘Creative industries’ are (typically) broadly comprised of small, medium enterprises (SME’s) that share a commonality of consistently engaging in imaginative, forward looking – forward thinking activities and, therefore are frequently embedded with intangible assets.
Creative industies and their founders-management teams tend to be individualistic and entrepreneurially oriented (spirited). The creative industries include such activities (professions) as architecture, crafts, entertainment, music, advertising/marketing, as well as numerous niche consulting firms who sense little need, in today’s nanosecond global business transaction environment, to be bound (limited) by, for example, conventional business plans and/or models, etc., that reward accumulation of tangible (physical) assets to the exclusion of intangible assets with little or no recognition – appreciation for the economic fact that intangible assets now comprise 65+% of the value, sources of revenue, future wealth creation, and sustainability for most companies.
The key drivers of creative industries are, in most instances, the intangible assets they create and learn how to effectively utilize and exploit. Equally likely, creative industries will be ‘learning organizations’, that is, their founders-management teams will consistently seek, assess, and find ways, when-where appropriate, to exploit ‘creative change’ within their organization. In other words, they embrace researching and learning about change as an essential tool and/or ingredient for executing their vision of normative competitiveness, i.e., how competition – competitiveness must (should) materialize in the go fast, go hard, go global business environment as foundations for companies to be sustainable.
Collectively, the ‘creative industries’ represent an increasingly important and profitable segement of the economy, one in which the Association of Certified Accountants (ACCA) reports may account for as much as 10% of the global economy and this sectors’ growth rate is reported to be up to three times the rate of the rest of the economy.
However, this ACCA report also strongly encourages the creative industrys’ to foster even more business-like strategies with respect to the production, utilization, and exploitation of their intangible assets. Translated, this means taking more care to sustain (protect, preserve) control, use, ownership, and monitor value and materiality of their intangibles. This will contribute to the creative industry sector becoming even more profitable, and perhaps more importantly, more sustainable (less ephemeral).
