Macau Matters | Stimulating industrial creativity

Richard Whitfield

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) for Sunday 13 December contains a “Designers Shine with Shoe Creations” article on page 6. I do not want to criticise the SMCP, or Hong Kong, but this article exemplifies all that is wrong with the current fad for stimulating creative industries in Hong Kong and Macau. We need much more sophisticated thinking if we want to truly diversify the Macau economy by expanding creative industries.
The article was about a competition to colour in the printed profile of a stiletto shoe design proposed by Jimmy Choo. All the competitors could do was to colour in their designs, and Choo said that “ I had to go to college to study shoe design but it seems that people taking part in this contest don’t need to”. I have never heard such rubbish. A simple colouring competition is not about improving design innovation, and to suggest that it is denigrates everything about what needs to change in Asia to compete with European and American design expertise.
I totally agree that the major “value add” in design is creating new product concepts and that if Asian companies want to move up the “value chain” they must create new and innovative products and services. However, to achieve this goal requires a major cultural shift which cannot be achieved overnight with stiletto shoe colouring competitions.
Fundamental social change to develop a creative and innovative community is a long term process that must integrate education systems that nurture creativity and innovation with business practices that value creative workers and government policies that allow for change and break oligopolistic practices.
Developing a creative and innovative workforce starts from primary and secondary schools that nurture innovation and creativity, and not the rote repetition of facts. But this cannot be achieved without teachers that understand what creativity and innovation is and know how to teach it. Unfortunately, currently in Macau teaching is a very underpaid profession that incorporates no certification of expertise in stimulating creativity or innovation. Until this changes you can forget any ideas about developing a creative and innovative workforce.
Similarly, creative and innovative businesses cannot develop without a social, political and business environment that encourages change and experimentation. Unfortunately, we do not have this in Macau. The typically corrupt business practices that you see here do not want change or innovation because they will lose their “rent seeking” business advantage. Similarly, most government departments do not understand or want change that breaks their “rice bowl”. All the existing powers want to see is childish and trivial colouring competitions so that they can pay lip service to notions of increasing creativity and innovation without any actual change. But in Macau we must demand real change.
Unfortunately, lip service to ideas about creating better and more innovative industries in Macau will not achieve the necessary changes.
Macau people must demand long term social change, from primary schools up, and must accept that such basic social change takes 10-20 years to achieve, and anybody saying that it can be done in a few years is lying, and must be questioned. The shift from derivative “copy cat” industries to a truly creative economy is fundamental and cannot happen overnight without corresponding fundamental changes to education, business and government practices. We need the powers that be in Macau to initiate these changes if they truly want change, but I am not convinced that they are serious. I hope that they can prove me wrong.