Why creative industries matter to economic evolution

This paper proposes that the ‘creative industries (CIs)’ play an important yet widely unexamined function in economic evolution through their role in the innovation process. This occurs in terms of the facilitation of demand for novelty, the provision and development of social technologies for producer–consumer interactions, and the adoption and embedding of new technologies as institutions. The incorporation of CIs into the Schumpeterian model of economic evolution thus fills a notable gap in the social technologies of the origination, adoption and retention of innovation.