Should policy-oriented research on creative industry clusters take both goals into account?
Indeed, can it? Yes, it can and should. I see ‘economic markets’ as concerned with economic efficiency, while ‘speech markets’ are concerned with a diversity of ideas. Policy-oriented research on creative industries, including the work on creative industry clusters, needs to assess a policy’s impact on economic efficiency and diversity of ideas. How do Canadian content policies improve economic efficiency? Content policies insure a basic market share for Canadian content in two ways. Firstly, they foster attempts to achieve minimum scale economies in the production, marketing and distribution of content. Secondly, they maintain or expand basic competencies in producing, marketing and distributing content. Canadian content policies increase the diversity of ideas by legislating restrictions on the use of imported content, thereby creating demand for ‘authentic’ Canadian content. This in turn might increase the diversity of content, which in turn might translate into a diversity of ideas
