Creativity is an untapped resource

Throughout our chequered history, success has always been to the credit of people power. That Malta’s human resources are the single natural resource for our economic development has been a mantra for politicians, economists, industrialists and academics for decades. Rightly so, governments have been pumping millions after millions of euros in education, setting up tertiary institutions and incentivising life-long learning and development.

Economically, Malta has been transforming itself gradually but steadfastly. The rise of the personal services and financial sectors as key contributors to our GDP and the emergence of a hybrid service-based manufacturing industry are continuously pointing out to a growing concern among policy makers: our competitiveness stands to be eroded unless we instil a culture of innovation and creativity in our single-most resource: our people.

Dexterity and diligence are often lauded by foreign investors setting up in Malta. Their testimonials in our investment promotion events are glowing. The future, however, lies in our ability to harness innovation, applying it to business and stimulating the creative sectors into a meaningful economic player.

Malta Enterprise has been chartering this terrain for some time. Although definitions of “creative economy” might vary, we have, for a few years now, opened up most of our pipeline incentives towards businesses that are innovative because their contribution to value-added is significantly higher than traditional activities. Today, we have a few glowing examples of such businesses.

The CREATE scheme, launched a few days ago, is another link in the chain. While we already provide start-up grants and incubation services to innovative start-ups, we also provide a range of incentives to those businesses that want to test their creative talent through research and development.

Over the past year, we have also been working intensively with the University of Malta and with the Malta Council for Science and Technology to set a holistic strategy for making Malta an attractive location for the development of digital entertainment products. Such products typically require an 18-month period of research and prototyping by digital artists, software developers and prolific scriptwriters. It would be foolish to think such a strategy can be articulated, rolled out and completed within a few months. It took countries like Ireland, Canada and the United States more than a decade to establish creative clusters of this sort. We are, however, confident the basic ingredients are all in place and the recent past has shown us that what other larger countries took decades to develop, Malta achieved in years. Just think for a while about the ICT, aircraft maintenance and pharmaceutical sector developments we have experienced in a mere decade. In all of these, a range of strategic policy decisions had to be taken ranging from legislative changes, education, infrastructure and tailor-made incentives.

With CREATE, we hope to achieve two key economic priorities. First, to bring the arts closer to business such that creativity infiltrates economic development. Second, to transform urban areas into creative value-added economic clusters. Noteworthy is the fact that most creative industries in Malta and Gozo are mostly micro-enterprises, hence, their rehabilitation into urban core areas fits their size and allure.

Malta Enterprise is thus calling on architectural workshops, ateliers, audio-visual production houses, performing arts studios, innovative craftsmen, fashion designers and the like to look into the CREATE scheme to seek our assistance to help them become leading participants in the new economy.

Ultimately, creativity is all about usurping talent.

The author is executive chairman, Malta Enterprise.