Can you own an idea?
Ideas Economy begins with my fascination with how ideas bring value. What makes a dancing image in your head transform into something tangible? Something that changes the culture of a place or elevates quality-of-life. Something that can be turned into a service or experience, then bought, sold, traded. Academic Rasa Levickaitė wrote a study; specific to creative industries but I argue it is applicable across sectors:
“The greatest effect of the creative economy is represented not through traditional creative industries but rather through practice of skills, entrepreneurship and business models, and creation of organisational value, both managing intellectual property.”1
Sectors that rely solely on commodifying ideas have these parameters to play with. Entrepreneurship, business modelling, intellectual property, organisational value; all tools to capitalise on the abstract or ephemeral.
Welcome to Ideas Economy, an online community to explore these things. I write about the capital of ideas from two perspectives:
Essays: intellectually sharp and playful observations that prompt you to think differently about things, the large and the mundane alike.
Reports: findings curated from current data, research, and trends analysis, to share with you the context of where we are today, where our larger discourse has taken us thus far, and what terrain is yet to be investigated still.
People who should read Ideas Economy
To start, read about The Birth of One Ideas Economy, and discover for yourself.
This place is for you if you are someone driven to solve the pressing issues in our world today, both complex and innocuous, you are drawn to design futures, the innovative, and the insightful.
If you’re part of a company, an Ideas Economy subscription is intentionally priced to comfortably sit within your subscriptions budget. Here is an email template to request to expense Ideas Economy to the company.
What to expect (newsletter logistics)
In essence, you can expect:
Paid subscribers have the benefits of:
Full access to the Ideas Economy community tools, including:
The Chat threads for design thinking, collaborating, and sharing your own topics for exploration.
The ability to share your comments on any article.
Free subscribers will receive the occasional free article.
Industries relevant to Ideas Economy
While all sectors must innovate to survive, Ideas Economy specifically focuses on those which rely most on the capital of ideas for their everyday functioning. This includes:
Entertainment and media, including music, theatre, film, publishing, gaming, and creative industries that depend on storytelling and creative production.
Arts and culture, which is built on creative and intellectual output.
Consulting and strategy, notably, professional services that offer ideas as solutions to complex problems.
Finance and venture capital, which rely on intellectual foresight to spot promising startups.
Fashion and design, requiring consistent aesthetic innovation and trend forecasting.
Non-profit and social innovation, encompassing those organisations focused on achieving social welfare.
Sir Ken Robinson (who delivered the most watched TED talk of all time) describes creativity as the ability to generate original ideas that have value. What allows our ideas to flourish is the second part. How might we create value, once our ideas arrive? And what are we to do with them? This is where we begin.
About Rachel O’Brien, the author
I am a Creativity and Strategy Consultant, entrepreneur and artist, that investigates the capital of ideas, where creativity and business practices intersect, and therefore how we might best direct culture, innovation, and systems design. I work across industries and have acted as either an owner-operator, strategist, or area specialist across entertainment, theatre, food and agriculture, not-for-profit, luxury retail, and manufacturing.
Australian by background, I have an MBA from the University of Western Australia, a BA (Design) from Curtin University, and an Adv Dip (Contemporary Music) from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.
You can learn more about what I do at rachelobrien.work.
Levickaite, R. (2011). Four Approaches to the Creative Economy: General Overview. Business, Management and Education, 9. https://doi.org/10.3846/bme.2011.06.
