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M
USIC AS A HOTBED FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
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ROLE FOR THE MUSIC INDUSTRY IN DESIGNING DEVELOPMENT POLICY
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Alberto Cottica (alberto@thehubweb.net)
Notes for a WOMEX (www.womex.org) conference session, October 28th 2005, Newcastle (UK).
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BSTRACT
Creativity is cool among the most unlikely people these days: economists, high-ranking civilservants and policy makers in general. Recent economic literature emphasises the role of localculture to foster innovation and development. The general idea is that regions or cities, to besuccessful, need to attract and keep happy the people that come up with new things, and thisentails attaching a positive ethical value to things like individualism, will to take risks, being “fringe”.Music is an excellent area in which you can promote this creative ethos. It commands enormousmotivation; it requires entrepreneurship; it has almost no capital requirements.This is an opportunity for the music industry: There are a lot more funds in regional developmentthan in culture, and governments are more willing to listen to showbiz people paying attention todevelopment issues, as shown by some projects going on in Italy.
 
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1. Theme
In this paper I argue that the music industry has a role to play in the shaping of the economicdevelopment policies Europe needs to meet the competitivity challenge of our times. Thisconclusion stems from the following points.1. There seems to be a wide consensus that the key driver to economic development isinnovation.2. The notion of innovation has been broadened well beyond the traditional idea of atechnical invention covered by a patent. The word innovation now extends to creativethinking in almost any field imaginable, from communication to education.3. It seems increasingly clear that innovative thinking depends very little onmacroeconomic (amount of capital), financial (availability of venture capital funds) or legal (patent protection legislation) variables in straightforward ways. At the very least,such old-school-economics conditions are necessary, but by no means sufficient.4. In fact, innovative thinking seems to happen within the context of relationships betweenpeople that are similar enough to be able to communicate and work together, butdifferent enough to give rise to new intuitions. This is fully consistent with the well knownfact that innovation has a regional dimension: it tends to happen more in some placesthan in others. Innovative regions are said to have an “innovation culture”.5. This raises the issue of what to do in order to stimulate the process. Can a culture bebuilt, or reinforced, by design? Certainly, given the stakes, European policy makers atvarious levels seem to be willing to give it a try.6. Among the recipes being circulated, two of the most promising seem interaction designand values communication. By
interaction design
I mean essentially the setting up of loci of interaction for potentially creative people and the shaping of the appropriateincentives for these people to start using these loci. By
values communication
I meanactively encouraging attidutes like individualism, will to take risks, even being “fringe”.Both these strands of policy must concern themselves with the young, who are theobvious source of innovative thinking.7. The music industry seems to be a valuable asset in this process. It thrives on creativity,aesthetical innovation, continuous remixing of styles; it makes ample use of socialmilieux in which creatives can interact; it strongly embraces a “do-your-own-thing”ethics; it has low barriers to entry; finally, it commands remarkable motivation and streetcredibility with respect to the new generations. It can be the training camp of innovators-to-be, and so have have a tremendous impact in promoting the participation of theyoung to the building or reinforcement of an innovation culture.8. In contributing to this process the music industry has a lot to gain. Playing the big gameof shaping our common future is in itself more rewarding than just minding one’s ownbusiness at the margin of the debate. Also, economic development is a much higher priority than music, so it naturally enjoys a level of funding which is greater by variousorders of magnitude.9. However, discussing economic development requires a new set of tools for musicindustry players. This cannot be used as a new source of funding for business as usual.The industry’s core skills must be bent and integrated to design and implementinitiatives that are functional to development policies. For instance, Arts Centres shouldtry to function as business incubators, spinning off new companies in the creative
 
Pagina 3 di 7industries; festivals should encourage grassroots creativity, both artistic and business,by involving up-and-coming artists and cooperating with young live productioncompanies wherever possible in a systematic way; integration with new media shouldbe pursued, and so on. Also, great attention should be paid to the regional dimension of projects: policy makers, with few important exceptions, think in terms of territory.10. Of course, a lot of these things are already happening. But, with a few exceptions, thereseems to be little awareness of the role that they play in development policy, asopposed to cultural policy. I recommend a Europe-wide effort of the industry to proposeitself as a valuable partner for economics ministries and their counterparts in localadministrations. I also recommend that companies monitor closely the EuropeanCommission’s 7th Framework Programme and make an effort to launch projects outsideCulture 2000 and other programmes for the arts.Section 2 discusses briefly some recent developments in innovation theory. This should beregarded as a sketchy survey of the conceptual arsenal with which to build policy proposals basedon music and creativity. Section 3 proposes that the music industry bids to take part in thisprocess, taking on the roles of policies test facility and large-scale value communicator.
2. Understanding innovation and its drivers
Europe’s social and economic system is widely perceived as needing more innovation, the LisbonStrategy being only the tip of a very large iceberg in this respect. Though well structured andendowed with remarkable strenghts, it seems to be losing momentum and resilience, frozen in aconfiguration that is not necessarily the most desirable one, nor the fittest in times of rapid change:innovation is seen as the force that can regenerate it. This judgment implies a broad definition of innovation. The latter is not only – and not even mainly – technical change, but is defined by theability to tackle new problems; to develop new approaches to the old ones; to promote the rise of new actors; to allow and encourage the diffusion of new solutions. In this sense a society is“innovative” if it shares in a full-spectrum innovation culture, i.e. if it accepts without reservationsthat looking for new solutions is a desirable activity even though it does not yield immediate results,and that whoever proposes a new idea to the community’s attention deserves respect. The exactopposite of innovator in this sense is conservative. A conservative person values the status quo,perceived as a guarantee of a satisfying equilibrium, whereas an innovator is ready to forego it infavour af any other solution, as long as it is more advantageous.So what drives innovation in this broad sense? A convincing answer comes from a recent strand ineconomic literature, the theory of strategy in a complex foresight environment. This theory wasproposed at the end of the 90s to explain the behaviour of firms (especially hi-tech ones) thatmove in a strategic environment that changes very fast, with lines of business that open up andclose down again within few years, lightning-fast-rising new players and sudden bankruptcies anddisapperances, mergers and spinoffs. This theory uses a notion of innovation similar to the oneproposed here, and puts it right in the center of its argument. The reason is simple: strategy in acomplex environment is the governance of structural change, and structural change
is
innovation ina broad sense. The theory of strategy in a complex foresight environment argues what follows.
 
Innovation is the redefining of the meaning of artìfacts (that can be material, likeproducts, or immaterial, like organizations) and the identities of the agents
1
.
The 
1
The original terminology of Lane and Maxfield [1997], used also in subsequent work in this strand of literature, does not coincide completely with the one used nere. These authors use word borrowed froncognitive sciences, that may appear obscure and even pretentious to the uninitiated reader. For example,the word
agent 
is not an exact synonimous of the more familiar concept of social actor. To avoid getting lostin definitions, I choose here to illustrate its fundamental intuitions using as few technical terms as possible.
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SoulToSoul @40

Yes another huge thank you for this write up. It has hit and lead me in a direction that is right on! Peace SKCM Curry

reply11 / 03 / 2008
onlinedesign

Fabulous information.

reply06 / 25 / 2008
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