DITCH the suit and tie, and grab yourself a roll neck, beret and thick rimmed spectacles: in the future creative sorts will have the edge.

Government statistics indicate that creative industries account for about 8 per cent of GDP, and employment in the sector is growing by 9 per cent a year compared with 1.5 per cent for the rest of the economy. One in five new jobs in London alone is in the creative industries. These industries traditionally include advertising, architecture, design, fashion, film, music, publishing, software and computer games, television and radio.

James Purnell, Minister for Creative Industries and Tourism, told a Smith Institute discussion on creativity: “It (the creative sector) will continue to grow as a global market, and there is no reason why Britain could not maintain or increase its share as that market grows. So when people ask ‘where are the jobs in the future going to come from?’, these sectors are an absolutely key part of that.”

But creativity is not the preserve of arty types, it is also a key business driver. Some 86 per cent of global executives, surveyed by Bain & Company, say that their firms see “innovation as more important than cost reduction for long-term success”. An innovation survey by another management consultancy, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), shows that 74 per cent of companies plan to increase their spending on innovation in the future.

Bain says business executives are keen to experiment with open-market innovation — in which companies partner customers, buyers and even competitors, to create and innovate. Although just 26 per cent of companies are currently using open-market innovation, it is tipped to become a hot future management tool.

The open-market approach is being seen as a backlash to intellectual property rights, which are accused of stifling creativity. So get ahead of the curve and log on to an open-source community. These are groups of enthusiasts who enjoy helping firms such as IBM, Nokia and Sun Microsystems create innovative software.

Our perception of creativity is changing: technology and engineering are increasingly being seen as key creative industries. Apple, 3M, GE, Microsoft and Sony were considered the most innovative companies in the BCG survey.

It seems we could all benefit from an injection of creativity. A paper in the journal Strategy+Business urges managers to ditch the “popular but false distinction which holds that creativity should be left to the creatives” — accountants can be creative too, honest.

But what if you’re a neuron short of being a bright spark? Entrepreneurship and innovation are now a key part of many university and business school courses. Many believe we should go further and make creativity a key part of education from the age of 4 — get those loo rolls and egg boxes out and go create.

Data file

IMAGINE being able to see into the future and predict the skills and knowledge you’ll need to scale the career ladder. This is the seventh in a ten-week series in which we ask researchers, pundits and futurologists to take a peek into their crystal balls, analyse the trends and make predictions to give you an idea of how best to succeed in the workplace of the future.

This week we read Capitalising on Creativity published in New Statesman (Oct 10); A Market for Ideas published in The Economist (Oct 22); Is Europe Losing it’s Innovative Edge? published in European Business Forum (Autumn); Suits to the Rescue, published in Strategy+Business (Spring); Management Tools 2005 by Bain & Company; and Innovation 2005 by the Boston Consulting Group.

• Next week: Coping with information overload

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