Our success depends on how well we exploit our most valuable assets: our knowledge, skills, and creativity. They are at the heart of a modern, knowledge driven economy.
(The Rt Hon Tony Blair MP, Prime Minister – 1998 Competitiveness White Paper)
The creative and cultural industries are now big business. Sources suggest that, creative industries in the UK are growing twice as fast as any other – at a rate of 8% per year. Back in 1950 the world’s biggest companies were all industrial and manufacturing types; today, in the more advanced world economies, publishers, broadcasters and entertainers join them – think Disney, Time Warner and News Corporation. It is these companies that manufacture information in our ‘knowledge driven economies’ but their key assets: reputation, skills and brands are difficult to define and fragile to maintain.
