Creative Europe

by Ziga Turk

Source: Today's Zaman

At the Spring European Council meeting held 13-14 March, European Union member states’ leaders launched the second cycle of the Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Jobs, a strategy initiated in 2000 with the aim of making the EU the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world. The EU’s current economic upturn suggests that the strategy is working, particularly after its renewal in 2005. But some areas in which Europe could gain a competitive advantage have been neglected. One such area is creativity.

The Lisbon Strategy owes much to the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, who claimed that profit results from innovation. This is an appropriate European compromise between the theory that profit comes from exploitation (Marx) and the view that it results from transactions that make both parties happier than they were before (Friedman). It is also appropriate for an economy where goods and services fulfill people’s needs and where products compete on their technical or functional features.

But in post-industrial societies, consumers look for more in a product than just functionality. Relatively prosperous Europeans tend not to purchase a car merely to get from point A to point B, shoes simply to keep their feet dry, a watch just to tell the time, or a bottle of water only to quench their thirst. They buy things that mean something more to them than what they use them for.

The intangible characteristics that make a product more than simply useful are what differentiate expensive products from cheap products and include design, brand name, and environmental friendliness. We also may be willing to pay more for products that are manufactured at home, in a safe workplace, without child labor, etc. These characteristics are intimately linked to the values and morals—to the general culture—prevailing in the market.

Companies apparently recognize this. According to popular business writer Daniel Pink, giving meaning or sense to a product or a service is increasingly becoming the main source of added value. This is all the more true as Asian universities turn out vast numbers of engineers and other knowledge workers who are just as qualified as their European colleagues and as brilliant in technical design as they are in optimizing the manufacturing process.

Adding value in this non-functional sense is quintessentially a European strength. It is at least as much an art as it is a science, and it goes beyond technical and business innovation. World-class design and brands already have a foothold in Europe, where creative industries are stronger than the car industry. There are good reasons for that.

Europe gave the world Hippocrates, da Vinci, Voltaire, Beethoven, Florence Nightingale, Dostoyevski, Nobel, John Lennon, and many others who have shaped world culture. Today Europe is defending the moral high ground when it comes to values such as human rights, peaceful conflict resolution, social welfare, and care for the environment. Far from being actual or potential obstacles to material success, it is precisely such values that should be celebrated and actively projected into Europe’s economy.

Embedding Europe’s cultural and ethical background in goods and services that reflect these values would not only set the European economy apart from the rest of the world, but would also strengthen these values globally. Perhaps the most urgent example is Europe’s moral leadership on climate change, which, supported through policies such as the Lisbon Strategy, should be translated into technical leadership and early entry into lucrative markets for low-carbon products.

The “soft power” of goods and services reflects the cultural environment that creative individuals require for their work and growth. In addition, such goods and services require properly cultivated consumers. As the urban studies theorist Richard Florida has argued, it is technology and tolerance that attract talents. Europe should therefore become a magnet for creative people from all over the world and should, based on its rich cultural heritage, raise its own.

Creating meaning and preserving values is probably the one task that Europe has to undertake on behalf of the entire world. If the EU focuses on infusing its goods and services with Europe’s guiding ideas and values, its economy will reap significant rewards. This will require an explicit emphasis on ensuring the conditions that promote and sustain creativity.

Ziga Turk is minister for growth and national Lisbon Strategy coordinator in Slovenia.

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