The role of creative industries in stimulating intellectual capital in cities and regions

The knowledge economy has put the focus on innovation, creativity and networks as drivers of competitiveness and economic growth. This has shifted development perspectives from tangibles-based competitiveness to knowledge-driven competitiveness transforming the way the economy is organised and putting the emphasis on the emergence of a new type of capital. Arts and cultural-related industries, also known as “creative industries”, represent a form of capital that provides direct economic benefits to cities and regions. This creative capital, defined as the intrinsically human ability to create new ideas, new technologies, new business models, new cultural forms, and new industries can fuel the regional intellectual capital. One of the knowledge economy dominant paradigms is the active role that places – states/cities/regions – assume in the attraction and development of talented and competent people. The competition is fierce at a global level to attract talents generating a widespread consensus that economic prosperity and concentration of creative people go together. In such context, cities and regions all over the world devote a large number of works to be purposely designed for encouraging and cultivating the collective knowledge or intellectual capital, as capabilities to shape efficient and sustainable actions of welfare over time. Thus it is important for regional managers to be able to describe and nurture their regional knowledge base. This leads to an increased interest in the development of methods and tools for analysis and promotion of regional intellectual capital, as a capacity of a city/region to create wealth and intangible assets. A critical need exists for understanding creative industries and its implications for economic development. There is also a high demand of new approaches to intellectual capital assessment and valuation at the macro level. We argue that the creative industries, characterised by the generation and exploitation of intellectual property, may contribute to better understand and assess intellectual capital in cities and regions. In turn, the models and frameworks on regional intellectual capital already in place may help to frame the foundations of creative industries and to stress the major role they play in building and sustaining their intellectual capital. This paper first explores the importance of creative industries for intellectual capital growth at a macro level. Next, the paper develops and integrates concepts from both areas of research demonstrating how creative industries can benefit from the developments already made in the regional intellectual capital field.