Musings from Britain’s John Howkins: author of The Creative Economy. He writes about some of the main themes in his new book, Creative Ecologies: Where Thinking is a Proper Job, for Linda Naiman’s The Creativity at Work blog.
Creative Ecologies
By John Howkins
When I was recently asked to write an article about the global financial crisis for Britain’s House of Commons magazine, ‘The House’, I asked several art dealers how they were doing.They said business was terrible and nobody was buying. But they also said that they were used to ups and downs, and they would simply lie low for a year or so.
They have no shareholders, no debt and few employees. They are in the business of thinking for themselves and living off ‘thin air’. They will survive.
Today’s crisis started with the collapse of asset values but goes far beyond economics.
It is not a single moment, like a credit crunch, but a process of change, a discontinuity. The problem is not any particular economic theory but the way we handle knowledge and so therefore the way we live and work.
