Creative Industries and the

Emotional Economy
Contribution by Kieran O’Hea to the Lord Mayor’s workshop “Promoting Cultural & Creative Industries and
th
Innovation in Dublin” held on Tuesday 19 January 2010.

“The world's greatest organizations don't build sustainable growth with accounting schemes. Instead, they
harness the unwieldy power of human emotions” - Jim Clifton, CEO, Gallup

During the past twelve years, I have contributed to various activities relating to the promotion of growth in the
creative industries. I have been involved at European level, at national level and at regional level. I have
developed concepts including Applied Creativity, Total Innovation and Intellectual Infrastructure. I have
participated in the Information Society, the Knowledge Economy and the Smart Economy.

I have come to the conclusion that the creative industries cannot be shoehorned into any of these economic
models. The natural environment for the creative industries is more likely to be an Emotional Economy, which
brings to the fore the whole paradigm of people being our greatest assets. This Emotional Economy is
characterized by emotive responses as opposed to rational.

The common denominator between the arts, sport and tourism, apart from the fact they are under one
Government department, is that we experience an emotional engagement with all of them. Engagement with
sport is an emotional one – verging on tribal at times. Engagement with tourism – especially when Ireland is the
destination - is definitely an emotional one.

Engagement with the creative industries – for example with advertising and the arts – is always an emotional
one. Yet these sectors are expected to conform to conventional economic models that have been designed to
generate growth from financial transactions rather than emotional ones.

As a nation, we have created an excellent global image through our creative arts, our history, our architecture,
our scenery, our hospitality and especially our people. The power of public perceptions about Ireland, the
quality of the Irish experience, and the way these experiences are perpetuated by word of mouth, is crucial to
the level of prosperity we can achieve from our emotional economy.

“Competitiveness must be built around something we know exists but which is seldom articulated in the
business world: emotions and imagination” - Lynn McHattie, Associate, pmpgenesis

We should stop pushing supplier-related terminology such as design, create, and innovate and focus instead on
the consumer-related emotional values that our culture, our heritage, our nature and our people evoke, such
as happiness, relaxation, inspiration, fun, warmth and beauty. We should drive the interaction with the
audience not only through our creative output but also by tapping into social media networks - a phenomenal,
free and global channel for emotional communication.
The cultural sector, including arts, sports and tourism, should thrive in an emotional economy. For the first time
it would find itself in an economic landscape where the value of its contribution would be uncontested. Left as
it is, time will continue to be spent trying to retrofit the cultural sector into the économie-du-jour by providing
opportunities for artists to learn business skills, for the business community to work with artists and for
creativity to be taught in schools. These initiatives are commendable but are not likely to deliver the quantum
leap that is probably required.

We should stop aspiring to be like Finland and New York and accept that we ourselves are the envy of many.
Finland did not set out to be a global innovator in communications. It set out to fulfil the needs of its own
people, providing essential communication to a dispersed indigenous population. Similarly Israel did not set out
to become renowned as a global innovator in defence systems, it simply set out to protect its own people.

If Ireland did decide to create an emotional economy, it would be the first of its kind in the world and it might
even make us the global innovators we aspire to be. It might attract some scepticism, even derision, but
judging by the undeniable global perception of Irish culture, where in the world would an emotional economy
be more apt?

Kieran O’Hea has been an advisor on creativity and innovation to the European Commission, Forfás and
InterTradeIreland. For more about Emotional Economy, contact Kieran at Marano Consultants, T: +353 87
6481344, E: marano@ireland.com