The Creative Economy

How People Make Money From Ideas
By: John Howkins

Penguin Paperback (2002)

I have always been fascinated by idea of Innovation & Creativity. This book explains more than the day to day things, but about how the world's economy develops by using ideas. People can understand more about the ideas of creative industries (which comprise of art, movies, software etc), cultural industries, creative cities (like in Silicon Valley) & creative classes/clusters

His six rules of a creative economy success is the simple:-
1) Invent yourself - be unique
2) Own your ideas - understand the copyrights laws
3) Know when to work alone, and when to work in a group
4) Learn endless. Borrow, reinvent and recycle
5) Exploit fame & celebrity
6) Know when to break the rules
* Personally, I agree more toward point No 4. This is just simply because life is a continuous life cycle thus we cant stop learning & then reinventing something old to be accepted as your own idea!

Overall, I rate this book as a very documented reseach project. There are nothing new to share, but it did able to advice us the thingst that we normally forgets. For instance, Howkins is able to share in great details the statistics of great Disney & Microsoft's progress and income

Again, I do not recomment this book to general public. But it is an ideal book for politicians, lecturers and captains of the selected industries.

The greatest impact that I found in this book is the conclusion which Howkin sums up at the very last page. It goes like this: "A society that stiffles or misuses its creative resources, and signs up the wrong property contract, cannot prosper. But if we understand and manage this new creative economy, individuals will profit and society will be rewarded".