creative industries

The creative industries refers to a range of economic activities which are concerned with the generation or exploitation of knowledge and information. They may variously also be referred to as the cultural industries (especially in Europe (Hesmondhalgh 2002, p. 14)) or the creative economy (Howkins 2001), and most recently they have been denominated as the Orange Economy in Latin America and the Caribbean 

Howkins' creative economy comprises advertising, architecture, art, crafts, design, fashion, film, music, performing arts, publishing, R&D, software, toys and games, TV and radio, and video games (Howkins 2001, pp. 88–117). Some scholars consider that education industry, including public and private services, is forming a part of creative industry.^[1]There remain, therefore, different definitions of the sector (Hesmondhalgh 2002, p. 12)(DCMS 2006). Yet so far Howkins has not been internationally recognized

The creative industries have been seen to become increasingly important to economic well-being, proponents suggesting that "human creativity is the ultimate economic resource," (Florida 2002, p. xiii) and that “the industries of the twenty-first century will depend increasingly on the generation of knowledge through creativity and innovation" (Landry & Bianchini 1995, p. 4)

How creative workers are counted

The DCMS classifies enterprises and occupations as creative according to what the enterprise primarily produces, and what the worker primarily does. Thus, a company which produces records would be classified as belonging to the music industrial sector, and a worker who plays piano would be classified as a musician.

The primary purpose of this is to quantify - for example it can be used to count the number of firms, and the number of workers, creatively employed in any given location, and hence to identify places with particularly high concentrations of creative activities.

It leads to some complications which are not immediately obvious. For example, a security guard working for a music company would be classified as a creative employee, although not as creatively occupied.

The total number of creative employees is then calculated as the sum of:

• All workers employed in creative industries, whether or not creatively occupied (e.g. all musicians, security guards, cleaners, accountants, managers, etc. working for a record company)
• All workers that are creatively occupied, and are not employed in creative industries (for example, a piano teacher in a school). This includes people whose second job is creative, for example somebody who does weekend gigs, writes books, or produces artwork in their spare time

Properties or characteristics of creative industries

Nobody knows principle: Demand uncertainty exists because the consumers' reaction to a product are neither known beforehand, nor easily understood afterward.According to Caves (2000), creative industries are characterized by seven economic properties:

1. Art for art’s sake: Workers care about originality, technical professional skill, harmony, etc. of creative goods and are willing to settle for lower wages than offered by 'humdrum' jobs.
2. Motley crew principle: For relatively complex creative products (e.g., films), the production requires diversely skilled inputs. Each skilled input must be present and perform at some minimum level to produce a valuable outcome.
3. Infinite variety: Products are differentiated by quality and uniqueness; each product is a distinct combination of inputs leading to infinite variety options (e.g., works of creative writing, whether poetry, novel, screenplays or otherwise).
4. A list/B list: Skills are vertically differentiated. Artists are ranked on their skills, originality, and proficiency in creative processes and/or products. Small differences in skills and talent may yield huge differences in (financial) success.
5. Time flies: When coordinating complex projects with diversely skilled inputs, time is of the essence.
6. Ars longa: Some creative products have durability aspects that invoke copyright protection, allowing a creator or performer to collect rents.

changelles facing Agriculture in Africa

LACK OF INFORMATION: Lack of information remains number one problem facing most small scale farmers in Africa today. Most miss out on new and improved methods of farming. Some especially those in the remote areas have no access to information at all not even radio sets. Even those in the sub-urban areas with some limited access to information, don't have access to better yielding and improved seeds, etc. Most also miss out on proper information regarding cheap but effective farming practices such as crop rotation, the use of green manure, etc, to fertize the land. Another major problem here is illiteracy. Even in cases where there is some access to information, most poor farmers are unable to discern due to illiteracy. Illiteracy is very high in rural Africa. Programs like adult education can go a long way in helping the poor farmers in rural Africa.

POOR FINANCIAL SUPPORT: Lack of financial support systems to enable farmers grow, expand, and maintain their yields. Although there are several Micro finance groups operating in Africa today, not so many farmers have access to these groups and not so many farmers even know how these groups operate and how such groups can help them in the long run. Most farmers in Africa are poor financially making it almost impossible for them to adopt new farming practices. For example, research has shown some seeds yield better and are more tolerant and disease resistant than others. However, such seeds are often sold at higher prices on the market than regular seeds and not so many farmers can afford them. Once again, proper education and government assistance can go a long way here.

LACK OF ACCESS TO FERTILIZERS: This falls under the poor financial system mentioned above. Because agricultural lands have become so expensive in Africa, most poor farmers have no choice than to farm on same pieces of land over and over again. Farming on same pieces of land for years leads to land degradation whereby fertile lands loose most of their nutrients and become unproductive or barren. Farmers therefore depend mostly on artificial fertilizers to enable them grow crops and improve their yields. Artificial fertilizers are quite expensive in Africa and in most rural areas, they are unavailable at all. Some government assistance such as giving farming subsidise to small and large scale farmers, giving some tax breaks, etc., can go a long way here.

POOR TRANSPORTATION: This is a major issue facing not just agriculture but the economy in general throughout Africa. Most of the farm produce in Africa just go waste in the remote areas why because most farmers find it very difficult transporting their farm produce to the market to sell. The roads don't exist and most remote areas find themselves cut-off from the rest of the world. Because there are no proper storage facilities in the rural areas, most perishable goods such as tomatoes, onions, leafy vegetables, etc., just rot away in the remote areas.

POOR MARKETS: Market for farmers has become one of the biggest issues for Africa today affecting the lives and living standards of millions of people. But how do we create markets and how do we make them sustainable and more importantly, how do we make them grow? Farmers in places like Zambia love one crop above all others - Maize. Everyone in Africa eats it and therefore everyone grows it. However, the sad thing is that, not everyone is able to sell it. Lack of market facilities and poor government regulations, etc., make it almost impossible for farmers especially small scale farmers to market their farm produce. Improved market facilities and good goverment regulations can go a long way in helping poor farmers market and profit from their harvests.

by Madauda Hannah

comes with a host of challenges. Rewarding challenges, but harsh challenges nonetheless. Experienced entrepreneurs have to deal with this no matter how long they’ve been in business -- trying to establish a brand, adjust to match or exceed the competition and keep your business profitable is a challenge no matter how many years you’ve been in business.

But for new and young entrepreneurs, there are some unique challenges that are especially difficult to overcome. If you’re just getting into the game, or you’re thinking about becoming an entrepreneur, be prepared for these eight significant hurdles.

Related: Myths That Can Hold New Entrepreneurs Back

1. Abandoning another career

If you’re going to dedicate yourself to starting and nurturing a business to success, it’s going to be nearly impossible to simultaneously manage another career. You might be able to manage the infancy of your business on the side, during weeknights and weekends, but if you want a chance of growing significantly, invariably you’ll have to quit your day job.

Walking away from a promising, steady long-term opportunity for something unpredictable is scary -- especially if you’ve never run a business before. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to address this. Just think through your decision logically, and don’t ignore your instincts.

2. Financing

Experienced entrepreneurs don’t have it easy when it comes to funding a new business, but they do have a few advantages over newcomers. They might have a pool of capital from a business they previously sold or a steady stream of revenue they can use to fund a new business’s cash flow.

Even if their first business went under, they’ve likely made investment contacts and client connections necessary to give them a leg up in a new enterprise. As a new entrepreneur, you’ll be starting from scratch, which means you’ll need to start networking like crazy and thinking through all your possible funding options before landing on one.

3. Teambuilding

This is especially hard if you’ve never run or managed a team before, but even if you have management experience, picking the right team for a startup is stressful and difficult. It’s not enough to find candidates who fill certain roles -- you also need to consider their cost to the business, their culture fit and how they’ll work as part of your overall team. Such considerations are exceptionally hard when you’re under the pressure of filling those positions as soon as possible.

4. Being the visionary

As the founder of your startup, you’ll be expected to come up with the ideas. When a competitor emerges, it will be your responsibility to come up with a response plan. When your team hits an impenetrable obstacle, your job will be to come up with an alternative plan to move forward.

This demands on-the-spot creative thinking -- which should be an oxymoron, but entrepreneurs rarely have the luxury of time. The less experience you have, the more pressure you’ll feel from this, and the harder time you’ll have coming up with acceptable plans.

5. Dealing with the unknown

How long will your business exist? How profitable will your business be? Will customers like your product? Will you be able to give yourself a steady paycheck? None of these questions has a solid, reliable answer, even in startups based on great ideas with all the resources they’d theoretically need.

That unknown factor means your job stability is going to plummet, and many of your long-term plans will remain in flux as new developments emerge. Dealing with this volatility is one of the hardest parts of emerging as a new entrepreneur.

6. Loneliness

It’s a rarely mentioned problem of entrepreneurship, and many new business owners aren’t prepared for it until it happens. Being an entrepreneur is lonely. It’s a singular position, so you won’t have teammates to rely on (completely). You’ll be working lots of hours, so you won’t see your family as often. And your employees will be forced to remain at a bit of a distance.

7. Rule-making

It’s fun to be the boss until you have to enforce something. Sooner or later, you’ll have to come up with the rules your business follows, from how many vacation days your workers get to what the proper protocol is when filing a complaint about a coworker. These details aren’t fun to create, and they aren’t fun to think about, but they are necessary for every business.

8. Decision-making

Believe it or not, this is probably the most stressful challenge on this list. New entrepreneurs are forced to make hundreds of decisions a day, from big, company-impacting decisions, to tiny, hour-affecting ones. Decision fatigue is a real phenomenon, and most new entrepreneurs will experience it if they aren’t prepared for the new level of stress.

SIRIKWA YASINTA THADEY

BREAKING DOWN 'Customer Service'

Customer service is an extremely important part of maintaining ongoing client relationships, which are key to continuing revenue. For this reason, many companies have worked hard to increase their customer satisfaction levels. Although many people may work behind the scenes at a company, it is primarily the personnel that interact directly with customers that form customers' perceptions of the company as a whole.

Keys to Excellent Customer Service

Most successful businesses recognize the important of providing outstanding customer service. A courteous and empathetic interaction with a trained customer service representative can mean the difference between losing or retaining a customer. When problems arise, customers should receive timely attention to the issue. Prompt attention to emails and phone calls is critical to maintaining good relations. Requiring customers to stand in long lines or sit on hold can sour an interaction before it begins.

Ideally, customer service should be a one-stop endeavor for the consumer. For example, if a customer calls a helpline regarding a problem with a product, the customer service representative should follow through with the customer until the issue is fully resolved. This may entail scheduling appointments with in-person repair personnel if the problem cannot be resolved on the phone, or transferring a call to skilled technicians in another department. Following up with the customer within the next day or two to ensure that he is fully satisfied is another smart move.

Attributes of Successful Customer Service Representatives

Customer service representatives must be accessible, knowledgeable and courteous. They require excellent listening skills and a willingness to compromise to reach a resolution. Training in conflict resolution can be very beneficial in fostering those skills. Strong speaking skills are another important attribute of a successful customer service representative. For phone staff, this means speaking clearly and slowly while maintaining a calm demeanor, even if the customer becomes upset.

Companies must make a commitment to providing up-to-date information to customer service representatives. To avoid complicating an existing problem, employees need to have the latest and most accurate information about products and company policies. Periodic assessment of customer service is essential to running a successful company. Surveys allow customers to provide feedback about the service they receive and to suggest areas for improvement.

by Abdallah Rebecca

 BY KIDENDEI SEGERETI S.

The digital age, also called the information age, is defined as the time period starting in the 1970s with the introduction of the personal computer with subsequent technology introduced providing the ability to transfer information freely and quickly

Digitalization is imposing many challenges on cultural transformation of organizational, practice related to individuals, institutions users and producers

When we think of marketing and social media in organizations it’s often with the focus being on the external environment and our external customers. This is not wrong by any means, but I think we can too often take for granted another key stakeholder we are communicating to, our internal customers, our employees.

Our employees make up who we are as an organization and they have a great impact on our culture. The questions we have to constantly ask as leaders are “What experience am I creating for them?” And, “Is it aligned with the culture I want in the organization?” Social Media and how we use it as an organization can have a great impact in creating experiences that impact the culture. Social Media creates experiences, period. The experiences employees are having, both by external and internal communication, in organizations greatly impact how they think and act at work and if they are truly engaged or not.  Leaders need to recognize that all experiences create culture, and their culture is either working for them or against them that is Change the Culture, Change the Game. Social Media provides a very powerful, viral experience that can help accelerate the needed cultural changes internally. The platforms will come and go, but how organizations leverage people as the media in a smart way 

The web has become the place where young people most find their opportunity to explore and express their identities and their social relations,. The greatest transformation with the web compared with television, radio and print is that the technology puts the kids in the centre as culture creators rather than culture consumers. Not only does this upset traditional top-down marketing models but it also means that a single youth culture is now almost impossible to pin down But now, with so many technological touch points and interest-driven groups, there's no single social change that catalyses them. We are at a period in which our societies are coming to grips with the new technology. Part of the process is watching how people who have never experienced anything else push the boundaries. The Internet has been hailed as an unprecedented democratizing force, a place where everyone can be heard and all can participate equally. But how true is this claim? It is argues that for all that we tweet  and like  and share in the Internet  in fact reflects and amplifies real-world inequities at least as much as it ameliorates them. Online, just as off-line.

                                                            

                       

The Implications of an Extranet on the Business Model

(graphics not available) Purpose of the Report 
The purpose of this report is to provide the strategic implications of an Extranet on my company's business model over the next three years. It is understood that the present business model utilizes an Intranet system. 
Background of the Topic 
When discussing Web-based technologies, we need to consider three distinct variations: the Internet, the Intranet and the Extranet. 
Internet 
The Internet is a public, global network of networks which is based on Internet Protocol (IP) and related standards (http://www.teleshuttle.com/media/extradef.htm). The Internet was designed to provide a standard means of interconnecting networks so that any system could communicate with any other system, regardless of physical location. It operates as a confederated network of networks (an "internet"), and offers universal accessibility (http://www.teleshuttle.com/media/extradef.htm). 
Intranet 

An intranet is a private application of the same internetworking technology, software, and applications within a private network, for use within an enterprise. It may be entirely disconnected from the public Internet, but is usually linked to it and protected from unauthorized access by security firewall systems (http://www.teleshuttle.com/media/extradef.htm). An intranet provides access to data across all functional areas of an organization. These functional areas including Sales and Marketing, Manufacturing and Production, Finance and Accounting, and Human Resources. Addtionally, Intranet applications have been developed for each of the aforementioned functional areas (see Figure 1 Above). 
Extranet 

While an intranet is private and is protected from public visits by firewalls, an organization can create an Extranet to allow authorized suppliers/distributors and customers/shareholders to have limited access to its internal intranet. An Extranet, or extended Internet, is a private business network of several cooperating organizations located outside the corporate firewall. An Extranet service uses existing Internet interactive infrastructure, including standard servers, email clients and Web browsers. This makes the extranet far more economical than the creation and maintenance of a proprietary networks. It enables trading partners, suppliers and customers with common interests to form a tight business relationship and a strong communication bond (see Figure 2). 
Extranet Security 

A typical Extranet site is partitioned into open and secure segments. Access security is the corner stone of the Extranet concept. Secure connections using Virtual Private Networks (VPN) between computers create a virtual tunnel, using inexpensive and ubiquitous public lines (see Figure 3). (Management Information Systems, pg. 291) Tunnel technology can also be used to individualize the Extranet site, providing access only to the features that a particular user is entitled to. 
Discussion Area 
A typical Extranet site also offers a private Discussion Area (Industry Network) and member feedback means, which permits the members to exchange ideas and to share information. The Discussion Area facilitates collaboration in solving joint problems and in continuous service improvements. Members are also able to provide valuable feedback though email links, questionnaires, surveys and guestbooks, and use patterns. 
Collaboration 
Close collaboration among Extranet members typically results in a better definition of a product or service, higher degree of cooperation and improved efficiency. An extranet extends a company's network beyond its boundaries to predetermined business partners, customers, suppliers and others. Companies have the ability to leverage key information residing on their Extranet. In 2003 Aber determined that "Given the fact that the average small business deals with 35 to 45 vendors three to four times per month, efficiencies gained through online collaboration can cut costs and improve a business's competitive position." (http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/0,4621,305817,00.html) 
Discussion of Current Issues 
Information Exchange 
Today, extranets are becoming a popular means for business partners to exchange information (http://www.informationweek.com/657/srcult.htm). A distributor or salesperson can go to a manufacturer's private extranet by entering a user name and password to access real-time information such as product availability, order status, and pricing. Other useful information also may be included on a manufacturer's extranets. For the most part, manufacturers and distributors are on the same page when it comes to what distributors want and the type of information that can be accessed from manufacturer extranets. 
Current Business Model 
Extranets have forced many corporate executives to reexamine how they manage their business models. With a proper extranet, every person can communicate with every person or functional role in a project. You don't have to know the names of the sub-contractors (http://www.cadinfo.net/editorial/extranet.htm). What's more, invaluable business processes are preserved. All communications are archived, in a form that cannot be edited. Just think: How many lawsuits could be avoided by the mere existence of an indisputable record of all project communications? One large builder was told by their attorney that just being able to retrieve all the project documents would save, at a minimum, tens of thousands of dollars on any project that resulted in litigation—just on the document assembly for the discovery process (http://www.cadinfo.net/editorial/extranet.htm) Additionally, Picture having a single virtual location for all project documents, accessible from almost anywhere. No more questions about whether the concrete people got the latest version of the foundation drawings. 
As associate editor of Information Week, Gregory Dalton, writes, "extranets are reshaping corporate culture as companies decentralize management, alter policies about publishing information, and redefine relationships with their business partners." (http://www.informationweek.com/657/srcult.htm)

origin of internet

The origins of the Internet date back to research commissioned by the United States federal government in the 1960s to build robust, fault-tolerant communication via computer networks. [1] The primary precursor network, the ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1980s. The funding of the National Science Foundation Network as a new backbone in the 1980s, as well as private funding for other commercial extensions, led to worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies, and the merger of many networks. [2] The linking of commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990s marks the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet, [3] and generated a sustained exponential growth as generations of institutional,
personal , and mobile computers were connected to the network.
Although the Internet has been widely used by academia since the 1980s, the commercialization incorporated its services and technologies into virtually every aspect of modern life. Internet use grew rapidly in the West from the mid-1990s and from the late 1990s in the developing world .[4] In the 20 years since 1995, Internet use has grown 100-times, measured for the period of one year, to over one third of the world population .[5][6]
Most traditional communications media, including telephony and television, are being reshaped or redefined by the Internet, giving birth to new services such as Internet telephony and Internet television . Newspaper, book, and other print publishing are adapting to website technology, or are reshaped into
blogging and web feeds . The entertainment industry was initially the fastest growing segment on the Internet. [citation needed ] The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interactions through
instant messaging , Internet forums , and social networking . Online shopping has grown exponentially both for major retailers and small
artisans and traders. Business-to-business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries.
The Internet has no centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage; each constituent network sets its own policies. [7] Only the overreaching definitions of the two principal name spaces in the Internet, the Internet Protocol address space and the Domain Name System (DNS), are directed by a maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a non-profit organization of loosely affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise.