約翰．霍金斯專訪

1 Understanding the Engine of Creativity in a Creative Economy: An Interview with John Howkins By Donna Ghelfi1 “Managing creativity involves knowing, first, when to exploit the non-rivalrous nature of ideas and, second, when to assert intellectual property rights and make one’s ideas-as-products rivalrous. These two decision points are the crux of the management process.” The Creative Economy, John Howkins “Creativity” permeates our daily lives from the moment we wake up in the morning to the time we retire in the evening. In ‘modern’ 20th century society, this creativity and invention follows us throughout our day as we make our way to work, during our shopping sprees, at the groceries, and in the evenings as we catch the latest blockbuster movie at our favorite cinema. To understand creativity and the significance of intellectual property in seeking to exploit ‘private property’ for profit, we turn to the book on “The Creative Economy: How People Make Money From Ideas” by the author John Howkins2. Published in 2001, the book has become a point of reference for those seeking to merge creativity with business acumen. Mr. Howkins, who was recently in Geneva to attend the second World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Inter-sessional Intergovernmental Meeting on a Development Agenda, (June 20 to 22, 2005) took time to meet with me to elaborate on the growing importance of creative economies. Donna Ghelfi (DG) – Mr. Howkins, would you please share with us key points about your background and career? John Howkins (JH) – I have had a mixed career. I started as a journalist and began writing on television and communications, media and satellite, cable and new technologies. Then I became a policy consultant, Executive Director of the International Institute of Communications3, which has members in about 100 countries. It is the only worldwide think-tank of communications technology and policy. I worked at the global policy level and then moved on to the business side where my main work was with Time Warner about developing new companies to develop film and television properties and 1 Donna Ghelfi, Program Officer, Creative Industries Division, Office of Strategic Use of Intellectual Property for Development, WIPO. 2 John Howkins is one of today’s leading thinkers on creativity and intellectual property. One of his current projects includes the formulation of an ‘Intellectual Property Charter’, The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (RSA), UK. 3 International Institute of Communications http://www.iicom.org/index.htm 2 assets. I now have two lives; the first is working as a business person. I am Director of a number of companies – film and television business and the second, in parallel, I help countries, cities, and corporations to explore creativity and manage creativity; in particular in how to turn their creativity into money, and this is when intellectual property kicks in. DG – What inspired you or rather what was the turning point for your focused involvement with ‘creativity’? JH – In the late 1990s there was a lot of focus on technology, on computers and Information Technology (IT): the dot.com boom, the web, the Internet, and I thought it was missing out a lot on what to me, in my business, is what makes it all tick, which is the individuals having ideas. I felt that in some way they were being ignored in favour of the technology, and I wanted to bring it back to the people having ideas: how do you encourage people to have ideas; how they work together to have ideas; how they sometimes go away and do it on their own and then, how they protect those ideas and develop those ideas and make a business of that. In the same way as successive generations of managers have needed to learn about computers and the Internet, so they now have to learn about intellectual property. DG – Did you encounter this yourself or did you see people experiencing these challenges? JH – It was many people coming to me saying ‘we want to start a business’; ‘we want to develop this software’; ‘we have a film idea’; ‘we have an idea for publishing’, or ‘we have an idea for an e-commerce project’. In many cases, they did not know how to go about it. Law firms weren’t really interested in helping them and governments didn’t really understand. So I thought there was something going on there that needed attention, starting with banks and all sorts of finance and from public institutions, and in particular governments. [People] are buying and selling words, music, pictures; gadgets, computer software, genes; copyrights, trademarks, patents; proposals, formats, fame, faces, reputation, brands, colours. The goods on sale in this noisy marketplace are the rights to use – or, in the lawyer’s phrase, to exploit – intellectual property. DG – So it started with the idea of the ‘ideas’? You then wrote the book entitled “The Creative Economy.” You go from the creative ‘individual’ to the creative economy, what a leap. JH – Yes, it is, but actually if you look at the big successful companies, they are all based on the ideas of usually one or two individuals about doing something differently or something better than somebody else, and that’s what it all boils down to. Initially, I started looking at the arts, in the cultural fields, in what is normally taken to be the 3 creative industries; but actually I think it is wider. I think creativity is critical not only in the so-called creative industries but almost anywhere--- town planning, urban transport, hotel management, and all sorts of things. It comes down to the recognition of the extraordinary talent within individuals and enabling them how to develop their talent in a corporate form. Creativity is not new and neither is economics, but what is new is the nature and extent of the relationship between them, and how they combine to create extraordinary value and wealth. DG – So why did you not stick with a term such as the Knowledge society, or the Information society? JH – The word ‘information’ seems to me to be a bit dead and passive. I looked at the history of the word information. It has changed quite dramatically over the past 40 to 50 years. It has been taken over to a large extent by computer systems, computers, and it doesn’t bring in the action of the human being, the human mind; it doesn’t bring in the human emotion, all the passion of acting upon. People act on information to have an idea, so information did not seem to be enough. ‘Knowledge’ seemed to be a bit bookish, a bit academic; something out there. Whereas what I wanted to look at was in here (pointing to his head), in the brain, in my mind, and how I can manage my brain to have a new or a better idea. So somehow the words ‘information’ and ‘knowledge’ seemed not quite to get to where I wanted to be. The word creativity, which is the same word we use ‘to create’ and used to describe God as the Creator, seemed to relate to something incredibly primeval. I took a rather spiritual approach to this and I think that is how people see their own creativity. It is something deeply personal. People will say, “I’ve had an idea” “what do you think of it?” (the creative product or service) and everybody else will pay a bit of attention and look forward to being stimulated and even excited. So there is a sense of giving birth – and it is very personal; it’s a bit spiritual and it’s certainly very private to start with. The words information and knowledge did not capture all of those sorts of questions or emotions, and feelings and possessiveness. So by choosing the terms creativity and the Creative Economy, I wanted to bring it back to something more personal. DG – So, how do you define the Creative Economy? JH – I think I would define it by saying that it’s an economy where the major inputs and outputs are ideas. I would also say it’s an economy where most people spend most of their time in having ideas. It’s an economy or society where people worry, think about their capacity to have an idea; where they don’t do just a 9 to 5 job something routine and repetitive, which is what most people did for many years whether it was in the field or in the factory. It’s where people, at any stage – talking to their friends, having a glass of wine, waking up at 4 o’clock in the morning – think they can have an idea that actually works, not just an idea with some sort of esoteric pleasure, but the driver of their career and their thoughts of status and their thoughts of identity. 4 The ‘creative economy’ consists of the transactions in (the resulting) creative products. Each transaction may have two complementary values: the value of the intangible, intellectual property and the value of the physical carrier or platform (if any). In some industries, such as digital software, the intellectual property value is higher. In others, such as art, the unit cost of the physical object is higher. DG – You seem to want to put back humanism in the idea of the economy. JH – It’s very humanistic, it’s deeply humanistic. DG – How has the term The Creative Economy been received? JH – The term The Creative Economy has become extraordinarily widespread throughout the world. I mean, I’ve traveled all over the world now, and people, everybody wants to be creative, every country wants to be creative, every city wants to be known as creative. It’s getting a little ridiculous. I would love to come across a city that says we don’t want to be creative at all or at least uses the word in a more precise way than most people now tend to do. The term creativity has become a little worn, a little overused. I keep on trying to reaffirm the basic principles of it. Everybody has its own interpretation of it. My own interpretation is very much based on the individual making his or her own way in the world as an individual creating their sense of self-identity, and through that, their business. That chain between individual self-identity and business is not accepted by everyone. Many people just can’t be bothered to think about the humanistic beginnings of it, and are just looking at the economic and social side of it. I don’t have a problem with that but I myself do make a connection with the humanist origins, when people in Europe began to realize around the 17th century that they, as individuals could create and be original in ways that hitherto had been reserved only for God or some other universal creator. So that is why this creative economy will become extraordinarily powerful. If it is a way of working that recognizes that, it will become very very powerful. DG – What is the distinction between creativity and innovation? JH – I make a big distinction. The distinction may not be in my book, but it is something I’ve explored more recently. Creativity is in the individual and it is subjective; Innovation is group-based and is objective. Innovation always goes to a Committee at some stage and will only be allowed to continue if it is approved. Whereas creativity is much more fuzzy and subjective. Creativity can move to innovation; creativity can power innovation; creativity can result in innovation. Innovation never causes creativity. Think about a pop song: pop songs can be very creative. Someone who writes a song that has words and a rhythm, a lyric, and a sound that we all like is being creative. But it is not innovative. Someone like Tom Cruise can be creative (but) he is not innovative. A film producer, a film director, an orchestra conductor, a designer can be creative, but not innovative. 5 DG – Is there a distinction then between artistic creativity and scientific creativity? JH – Well, scientific creativity is an interesting thing. I was talking to Sir John Sulston who was the head of the British arm of the search of the Human Genome two years ago. He was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2002 for physiology and medicine. John was saying that his work was not creative. He was rather resisting the phrase. He was saying ‘all we do is work very hard, compare figures; we’re not creative at all.’ He rebelled against being seen as someone who was a bit fuzzy and romantic. He made this remark in a meeting of the Commission on Intellectual Property, consisting of about 20 eminent people and most said ‘John, you’re talking rubbish’. And I agree with them. I think that scientists can be as creative as an artist. There is no question in my mind about that. A lot of artists are not creative. They make, they paint another landscape, and it’s technically okay; but it’s not what I would call truly creative. A lot of computer programmers are not really creative but they write programs and one or two are truly creative. DG – So the idea comes first, whether you are an artist or a scientist. What you do with the idea will differentiate your creative product and/or innovation? JH – Innovation is a social process. It’s much more to do with developing a new way, a new method, new methodology of doing something for the market, and taking it to the consumer. DG – In your book you say… “Both arts and science are attempting to imagine (to visualize) and describe (to represent) the nature and meaning of reality. The difference comes in why they choose to do so, how they present their imagining to the world, and how they protect its economic value. Put simply, the creativity is the same; the creative products are different.” (The Creative Economy, pp. xi) Do you still maintain this? JH – Absolutely. Yes. DG – In this context, what is the role of intellectual property (IP)? JH – Intellectual property used to be an arcane and boring subject, something for specialists only, but within the past few years it has become a powerful influence on the way everyone has ideas and owns them, as well as on global economic output. People need to make money out of their ideas. So they need to be given some form of exclusive rights over their ideas. Therefore, we have copyright, patent, trademarks and other legal proprietary systems. It’s one of the ways, and in some industries it’s the major way. In other industries, it’s not the major way but it’s important. But how do they do that? Against that, I would say, just as the people having the idea benefited from having 6 access to everyone else’s idea, so that when we grant a monopoly right, whether it’s copyright or a patent, or a trademark – although in many ways all these are very different – we should do so in such a way that we should finely balance off the individuals right to a need and a certain justification to earn money; and if it does something wonderful, s/he earns lots of money. I’ve no problem with people getting very rich indeed, no problem at all with allowing other people to get access to that work, or idea. I think that’s where the current problem is, and that is what we are now discussing here at WIPO during this IIM meeting, and in other fora. We haven’t got it right yet. There are some people that say there is no problem. I’m a director of a film company. Our assets are completely copyrighted. We need to protect our copyright. There is no question about that. Someone writes a song, writes a novel, has an idea, develops a logo, a brand. Absolutely they should be protected. There’s no question. The more we move over to an economy based on ideas, the more we need to ensure that the people who develop those ideas have a good life. We would all ‘potter’ if it doesn’t happen. DG – That is, have a good life and a right to remuneration? JH – Well, it’s more than a right to remuneration because the right to remuneration is like “I’ll give you a compulsory license and you can get a little bit of the crumbs.” You know, I’m talking more than that. I mean, I think that people who do something which is remarkable and wonderful should be allowed to make money out of it. Because in some industries doing something remarkable and wonderful is usually very expensive and very risky. One needs to bring in lots of money to support other stuff. At the same time, you also need to have a set of rules that allow people access to the ideas, the work and the knowledge that have been generated through this creative economy. It’s a fine balance that is slightly off-balance at the moment. Entrepreneurs in the creative economy (often called ‘creative entrepreneurs’) … use creativity to unlock the wealth that lies within themselves. Like true capitalists, they believe that this creative wealth, if managed right, will engender more wealth. … These entrepreneurs share five characteristics: (i) vision (ii) focus (iii) financial acumen (iv) pride and (v) urgency. DG – That brings us to the ‘creative industries’. What are they? JH – (Laughs) That’s the question I usually avoid. But I’ll tell you what they are. There is a list with 14 or so sectors – advertising, architecture, art, crafts, design, fashion, publishing, film and video, TV and radio, interactive leisure software, music, performing arts, photography, software and computer services – which most countries have accepted and that are arts based. Now, in my book4, I have added in science and other non-arts based industries, and just writing the book, I’ve become more inclusive. So, although I talk a lot about the creative industries it is because that is the phrase governments understand, that WIPO and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) uses; that everyone deals with. Therefore it is the right phrase. 4 Advertising, Architecture, Art, Crafts, Design, Fashion, Film, Music, Performing Arts, Publishing, R&D, Software, Toys and Games, TV and Radio, and Video Games. See pg. 116, ‘The Creative Economy’ 7 At the same time, the sort of creativity that I am talking about exists almost everywhere. If I was running a hotel here, in the tourism business, what’s going to make my hotel a success or not is if it delivers the right room at the right price; has customer service, etc. But if it has some edge, some special qualities, where do I go? Do I go to my in-house department guy who is running beverages? Probably not. I’ve got to go to someone who I would call creative. So, I need these creative people. Not out there but in here, in my own business. If I’m developing a pharmaceutical drug or if I’m running a Marina, I need people to think up new ideas about how to differentiate our goods or services from those of others. If I’m running the Marina in the Lake of Geneva over there, I need to work with the boat owners about how to run the best Marina in the world. I can’t do it sitting in my hut wearing my manager’s Marina hat. I’ve got to get out there and talk to my boat owners. We’ve got to work together. The people in this Marina are all probably extremely bright people but the manager is probably not talking to them. He’s probably sitting in his wooden hut making sure they tie up their boats and don’t drown; which is fine and he’ll live to a happy age. But he really won’t make it a really good Marina. So there is a sense in which creativity can apply to anything. The ‘copyright industries’ consist of all industries that create copyright or related works as their primary product … The ‘patent industries’ consist of all industries that produce or deal in patents … The ‘trademark and design industries’ are even more widespread, and their sheer size and diversity make them less distinctive. Together, these four industries constitute the ‘creative industries’ and ‘creative economy.’ This definition is contentious. While all the definitions so far concur with international practice, there is no consensus on this one. DG – One should not therefore limit on