Creative business is a business which focus on creating and exploiting

intellectual property products such as music, books, film, and games; or providing

business-to-business creative services including advertising, public relations, and direct

marketing1. In Indonesia, creative business is growing rapidly nowadays. This rapid

growth happens because Indonesian people more realize the important roles of creative

business. Creative business has been proved that it can resist through global financial

crisis because of its independence. Moreover, creative business can solve the problem of

unemployment by creating more job fields and absorbing more labors; though there are

still some problems such as lack of government’s roles and skill development.

Creative business can create more job fields in Indonesia. Statistic from Ministry

of Trade RI shows that total company growth in creative business is 12,38% in 2006.

The amount of creative business in Indonesia has reached 2.188.815 companies or

5,17% from the amount of all business in Indonesia. Those numbers reveal that

contribution of creative business in creating job fields is not small. The reason for this

phenomenon is because main asset needed for building creative business is very simple,

which is creativity. Everybody has sense of creativity regardless of the level. Moreover,

building creative business can be started by low budget. For example, building an online

boutique can be alternative way for creating creative business with low budget.

Demand for labors of creative business in Indonesia is high enough. It can be

proved by statistic from Ministry of Trade RI, which shows that the labor growth in

creative business increase every year and the amount of creative business’ labor has

reached 5.400.910 in 2006. Moreover, the participation rate also increases from 5,14%

in 2005 until 5,79% in 2006. These increases then describe that creative business needs

more sources of labor for some reasons. The first is because there are more creative
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businesses which are created in Indonesia. The rise in amount of companies in certain

sector will absolutely increase demand for labor in the same sector. The second reason

is because most of creative business is labor intensive – which is creative business

relatively needs more labors than capitals. Therefore, creative business can absorb more

labors.

However, developing creative business needs support from government. The

support is not only financial support, but also regulation support. In Indonesia,

government has only developed support in financial system, such as PNPM Mandiri and

credit with low interest. Indonesia government has not yet developed regulation support

for creative business such as building good atmosphere for creative business, giving

more attention and protection for creative business’ labor, and simplifying

government’s bureaucracy. Building good atmosphere for creative business is very

important to stimulate people for creating creative business. Furthermore, government

should also pay attention with welfare of creative business’ labor either giving health

security or social security. Last, government’s bureaucracy has to be simplified in order

to ease people for creating creative business. Without those incentives, creative business

will be difficult to develop.

Besides support from government, skill development is also important to

develop in line with creative business. Condition of creative business’ skill development

in Indonesia is not good enough yet, right now. There’s only few vocational education

like school of music, school of movie, or school of art. Indonesia still focuses on general

education such as mathematics, science, economics, etc; though Indonesia is starting to

socialize SMK now. Thus, building up education and training for creative business’
labor is very important. In addition, research about creative business has to be increased

so that there will be more innovation in creative business in Indonesia.

In conclusion, creative business has important role to solve the problem of

unemployment not only from the supply of labor side but also from the demand for

labor side. From the supply for labor side, creative business can absorb more labors

because creative business is labor intensive. Further, creative business also can create

more job fields so that it can solve the problem of unemployment from the demand for

labor side. However, there are still some challenges which have to be cleared, such as

government roles and skill development to support creative business. Therefore,

creative business needs support from various sides in order to maximize its function to

solve the problem of unemployment.

 The Roles of Creative Business in Indonesia

And Its Challenges

By: Direta Wonahausi (0706285966)

This essay is for Academic Writing and Presentation’s Assignment

Class: Mrs. Cintavhati

Faculty of Economics University of Indonesia

Depok, 2009