Creativity seems to be the "in" word these days, and creative industries development has found its way to the top positions of the political agendas of many governments including that of the Hong Kong SAR.

However, the arguments put forward to support creative industries development so far have been qualitative descriptions of subjective wishes, wanting in benchmarks and parameters offering a more precise and accurate picture of how a city performs in the global competition for creativity.

Indeed, economies around the world do make an effort to measure the creativeness of their communities. At present, this mainly takes the form of baseline studies which map out the basic facts of an economy's creative industries. Measured in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), creative industries are dwarfed by other heavyweight sectors. In Hong Kong, for example, creative industries accounted for slightly less than 4 percent of GDP in 2001, hardly an impressive share.

The baseline studies measuring the GDP contribution of creative industries only survey the downstream aspect of a creative economy. What we want to know is what makes a society creative and hence enables creative industries to flourish? These call for an analysis of the upstream aspects of a society - the values, institutions, practices and customs - that attract creative talents and creative enterprises to come to our cities, make homes in them and develop their creative business there.

Then, the crucial question is how do we, on the one hand, provide an environment that is conducive to the development of creative people so that the creative genes of our society are recognized at the earliest possible stage and are given the fullest support, encouragement and motivation for them to grow and flourish as well as to make their birthplace a permanent home in the development of their creative business and artistic adventure. And how do we, on the other, attract creative talents and creative enterprises from all over the world to come to our cities, make home in the cities and develop their creative businesses there? To answer these questions, I think we should first ask ourselves how creative talents behave and what their preferences are. Creative talents are fluid - they move around in search of places in which they are comfortable; they are IT-savvy - so the availability of state-of-the-art IT infrastructure and services is indispensable; and they are pluralistic, and hence a society with a high degree of tolerance and a diversity of social and cultural activities is a magnet to creative people. What creative talents ultimately look for is a place with a creative lifestyle, a place which is constantly interesting, and above all else, a place where they can validate their identities as creative people.

In a nutshell, creative talents tend to be attracted to and stay in places with a set of characteristics, the most crucial of which include

(a) the free flow of information, capital, talents and goods, guaranteed by the presence of a free and open society underpinned by political stability and a high degree of transparency in public affairs;

(b) the rule of law and full protection of copyrights, as well as a clean and efficient government;

(c) an embracing society that cherishes tolerance, plurality and diversity, allowing divergent views to co-exist peacefully;

(d) and a rich and vibrant culture, encouraging different forms of artistic creation in various spectra of the community, and with openness to diversity of all kinds.

For creativity, what really counts are people! It is people, and people only, that ultimately make or break a creative society. Creativity can be achieved only when a city succeeds in attracting, nurturing and retaining a critical mass of creative people.

The author is former secretary for home affairs of the Hong Kong SAR government

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(HK Edition 10/21/2009 page1)