In this modern era, creative economy business continuously develops and grows. In this kind of business, the main commodities are creativity, imagination, and innovation. It is different from manufacturing economy businesses where the main factors that encourage the value of the business are outputs, tradings, and demands. In the creative economy, the uniqueness and strength of your ideas are more important than the efficiency of your production lines.
Why Does the Creative Economy Become Important?
Regardless of the name, the creative economy is not limited to specific creative fields. As long as the value is measured in terms of innovation and ideas, this concept applies. However, the industries that are mostly related to the concept are culture, arts, media, designs, and entertainment. There are some reasons why the creative economy becomes important today. First, today’s technology makes it possible for people to quickly and easily launch and promote their ideas, regardless of their backgrounds and incomes. For instance, business implementations such as lean startups shortens the business development cycle, allows them to launch products and services as quickly as possible.
Moreover, there are so many repeated simple works today that can be automated. The experts estimate that there will be around 5 million jobs that will be gone in the global market in 2020. Based on the same reports, the skills that will become important and increase during this time are cognitive skills which include creativity and cognitive flexibilities. It means that jobseekers in the future should bring something extra, which is their creativity. What is valuable in the creative economy is how unique and innovative your ideas are, instead of your creative outputs.
How to Develop Yourself in the Creative Economy
Regardless of the skills you have, it is possible for you to participate in the creative economy. Below are the skills that you will need to develop and grow in the creative economy.
- Competence and mastery in your field. Because a person’s value in the creative economy depends on their ideas, it needs the competence to do it well. But it is not enough just to figure out the skills needed to call yourself a programmer, artist, or startup founder. You also need sophisticated and valuable ideas in your industry. You can reach this only through hard work, experiences, and evaluating your ideas.
- Entrepreneurial skills. Without suitable entrepreneurial skills, it will be difficult to create profitable projects that can last for a long time. Entrepreneurial skills are not only limited to the financial aspects of your ideas. It is also important for businessmen in the creative economy business to understand marketing, sales, and organization. If you have teams in your business, management skills will also be beneficial.
How to Make Money in the Creative Economy
If you do not have any specific projects or ideas to launch yet, there are several businesses that you can try to start your own project in the creative economy.
- Teaching Specific Skills
Since creative performers tend to have strong knowledge in their fields, they can build a business by teaching a specific skill that they have learned and done over and over. The skills can be technical skills, creative skills, or even soft skills such as networking, communicating, public speaking, and negotiating. You can join educational marketplaces that are available a lot on the internet. But if you do not want to join educational marketplaces, you can create your own course website, sell e-books, or create personal workshops or boot camps.
- Turning Your Skills into Products
Another way to make money in the creative economy is by changing your special skills and knowledge into products. The products then can be used by people who need the skills. It can be in the form of design templates, graphics, photos, or worksheets that simplify a complex process. Unlike services that often have price changes and require a lot of face-to-face with each client, products should have simple and unseparated pricing for each client.
- Publishing Content
When it comes to ideas, one of the ways to make them shine is by creating interesting and attractive content that can amaze your targeted audiences. You can create content in the form of videos, podcasts, pictures, and others. You can start by creating your own content.
- Creating Solutive Technology Tool
Creating innovation in the form of solution’s technology tools is a great idea to make impacts in this technology era as well as creative economy. The tool does not have to change the world, just being a solution to a problem is already enough. For example, you can create accounting software that can provide real-time data.