Situation and Development Opportunities of Creative Industries Companies in Latvia
Nowadays, the information economy is in the process of transition to a creative economy focusing on human creativity and innovative ideas. Creative industries are among the fastest growing sectors of the global economy, more and more of export capacity of the developed countries of the European Union relies on the creative capital and companies of the creative industries. However, the innovation and labour productivity rates of the Latvian population are lower than in the developed regions of Europe. The aim of the research is to evaluate the creative industries companies in Latvia, detect their problems and identify opportunities for development. At first, in the article, the theoretical basis of the activity and specificity of detecting creative industries have been reviewed, taking into account the fact that creativity is an intangible factor that is exposed to constant change and not easy to measure, which creates problems of management in practice. In the second part, the composition of the creative industries in Latvia is defined by identifying 8 groups according to the activity type, which can be directly attributed to creative industries, including software and computer services group. Next, based on statistical data and survey results, the characteristics of Latvian creative industries are defined in order to understand the current situation, problems in the creative industries sector; as well as analyse the development potential of the creative industries. At the end of the article, there are conclusions and suggestions for improving the performance of the creative industries companies. Used in the research are the following theoretical methods: textual analysis, document analysis and content analysis, the survey method, methods of data processing and statistical analysis. The period of research is from year 2010 to 2015. The survey part of the research took place from April until May 2016. The research was limited by the inaccessibility of the current statistical and economic information isolating the creative industries. Official data are only available at the NACE classification 2-digit level, which poses constraints for characterizing each creative sub-sector in the industry and could serve for the sectoral analysis of solely the sub-sectors directly linked to creativity.