Creativity, Entrepreneurship and the Creative Economy

When people put in practice their creativity, ideas, and talent to build up a business or a self-employed business in the cultural and creative industries, they act as creative entrepreneurs. Creative entrepreneurs use their talent, creativity, and artistic knowledge as specialized assets in the creative economy (Howkins 2001). Like kirznerian entrepreneurs, they often have no productive or financial assets at first. They try to put in value their social capital and their artistic or creative ideas as a symbolic capital. Besides, creative entrepreneurs must cope with the uncertainty of the demand for cultural and creative goods. From this standpoint, they look like a type of knightian entrepreneurs. They also run the risk to be imitated. The only way to protect their cultural and creative assets is to rely on property rights, if they can meet the cost and complexity of the intellectual property protection. Part of entrepreneurs come from creative economy stakeholders, especially the "creative class" (Florida 2002) that grows with the development of "cognitive-cultural production systems" (Scott 2008). Another part consists of creative entrepreneurs-contributors coming from the digital economy, social networks, and social economy.