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Multiple creative talents and their determinants at the local level

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Abstract

Creativity is currently at the centre of a lively scientific debate in which scholars from different fields are engaged. The interest on such topic is mainly due to its potential positive impact on economic development; thus, understanding the determinants of creativity becomes important in terms of policy decisions. Although the existing literature has identified some determinants of creativity, evidence on the specific impact of such determinants on particular creative talents and on the degree of creative complexity within a local area is still scant. This work tries to fill this gap starting from the thought that the mental cross-fertilization of talents in different fields is what stimulates the best and most original ideas. By considering artistic, scientific, and economic creativities as the main modes in which creativity can show itself, the paper explores empirically the relation between local socio-economic characteristics and the concurrent presence of multiple creative talents.

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Notes

  1. There are, in any case, two main approaches which try to measure creativity: the industry-based approach and the occupational approach. The industry-based approach focuses on the identification of creative industries, whose employment and value added are considered as a proxy for the creativity of a given area (see, for instance, Lazzeretti et al. 2012). The second approach is the so-called occupational approach, which is essentially based on Florida’s work (2002). The author looked at “creative occupations”, identifying a so-called “creative class” which includes a “creative core” and some “creative professionals”.

  2. The idea of “mental cross-fertilization between different disciplines” was in fact introduced by Andersson et al. (1993). However, Camagni (2011) provides a very interesting perspective on the concept.

  3. Florida (2002) looked at “creative occupations”, identifying a so-called creative class which includes a “creative core” (scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and novelists, artists, entertainers, actors, designers and architects, editors, researchers, analysts, and opinion-makers) and some “creative professionals” (who work in a wide range of knowledge-intensive industries such as high-tech sectors, financial services, the legal and health care professions, and business management). In a later work (2003) the author specifies that his “creative class” includes people whose function is to “create meaningful new forms”.

  4. Florida measures this mainly through a “gay index”. In practice, he uses same-sex households reporting as partners (and thus presumably gay) in the census to proxy diversity. He calls the gay and lesbian population the “last frontier” of diversity in our society. However, Florida (2002) also used the so-called Composite Diversity Index (CDI) that puts together three measures of diversity (gay index, bohemian index, and melting pot/foreign-born index). According to the author, diverse, inclusive communities that welcome gays, immigrants, artists, and free thinking “bohemians” are ideal for nurturing creativity and innovation (Florida and Gates 2011).

  5. See also the pioneering work of Adorno and Horkheimer (1947) on cultural industries and, for practical examples and different classifications, UK Department of Culture Media and Sports (1998, 2001); WIPO (2003, Copyright Industries); Throsby (2001) and KEA (2006); Santagata (2009); UNCTAD (2008, 2010) and UNESCO (2009).

  6. For a discussion on the different types of amenities, see Clark (2011b).

  7. This conceptual framework has already been presented in Cerisola (2016). It is connected to Asheim et al.’s (see Asheim and Hansen 2009; Asheim et al. 2011) knowledge bases; however, there are some relevant differences, mainly related to the fact that their approach is thought for industries and firms (e.g. different knowledge bases from which industries draw upon, different innovation processes of firms among different sectors), while the present conceptual framework has to do with the specific creative specialization of local areas. Moreover, the difference between Asheim et al.’s synthetic knowledge (“engineering based” according to Asheim et al. 2011, p. 893) and the economic creativity considered here is quite substantial in that the latter basically refers to business ideas.

  8. The specific periods taken into account are 2001 and 2011 because these are the years for which the Italian Census of Population and Houses—from which the information is retrieved—is available (see Sect. 4.2 for further details).

  9. About 12% of the observations moved from non-creative to creative categories or viceversa (see model 1); about 38% of the observations moved from a main pattern of local creative specialization to another (see model 2); and about 45% of the observations moved to a different degree of creative complexity (see model 3).

  10. See also Clifton (2008).

  11. In 2011 Italian provinces were, in fact, 110. For comparability, data for 2011 were aggregated in order to obtain the same 103 provinces as in 2001.

  12. See also UNCTAD (2008) and Throsby (2008 and 2010).

  13. This allows to escape from the logic of the mere employment and to consider the overall environment of Italian provinces. On creative environments see in particular Andersson et al. (1993).

  14. This problem for Italy (and Eastern Europe) is also highlighted in Audretsch and Belitski (2013).

  15. European Commission (2013): http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docgener/studies/pdf/regional_entrepreneurship_development_index.pdf, accessed on June 27 2016.

  16. http://www.gemconsortium.org/, accessed on June 30 2016.

  17. The usual statistical technique for this type of work is cluster analysis. However, a classical clustering procedure was not feasible in this particular case, due to two main issues. First, and most important, the distribution of the observations (Italian provinces) across the identified measures of (different types of) creativity is very polarized (see Table 2 and Fig. 2). Second, retaining the operational scheme presented above was thought to be useful so as to have a clear conceptual framework to work in. Thus, there was the intention to assign every Italian province to one of the creative patterns identified before.

  18. According to Correia and Costa (2014), a creative place should be well connected (good transport system and infrastructure).

  19. Once more with the exception of low skilled foreign born.

  20. R&D activities are missing in Santagata’s (2009) classification and were added within this paper.

  21. For each “macro”-sector, Santagata considered the whole “Creative Industry Production System” (CIPS), which included (a) Design & Production, (b) Inputs and other activities related to production, (c) Retailing, and (d) Activities related to the retailing.

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Acknowledgements

The author is obliged to the whole research group in Urban & Regional Economics at the ABC Department, Politecnico di Milano, for support and suggestions; special gratitude goes to Professor Roberta Capello for invaluable advice. Very helpful suggestions were also provided by the participants in the 56th ERSA Congress in Vienna and in the 37th AISRe Conference in Ancona.

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  1. ABC Department, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133, Milan, Italy

    Silvia Cerisola

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Appendix: Creative industries

Appendix: Creative industries

In order to identify creative industries, this work refers to Santagata’s 2009 classification.Footnote 20 The author singles out some main creative “macro”-sectors, namely industrial design and craft; fashion; food, and wine; computer and software; publishing; TV, radio, and cinema; cultural heritage; music and entertainment; and architecture and engineering.

Within the above categories, the ones taken into account are those activities that Santagata listed in the “Design and Production” phase of the production chainFootnote 21 (see Table 7 for details). This choice is related to the idea that the core components of creativity lay in the conception of (creative) products. According to this view, disregarding the other phases of the production chain seemed particularly reasonable.

Table 7 Sectors considered as “creative industries”
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Santagata’s classification has got many significant advantages: it includes both manufacturing and services and it identifies sectors very precisely, according to the ATECO classification at 4–5 digit level.

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Cerisola, S. Multiple creative talents and their determinants at the local level. J Cult Econ 42, 243–269 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10824-017-9299-8

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