Moderator Nonna Materkova, Director and founder of the Calvert 22 Foundation, opened the session by announcing its topic and stressing the growing importance of human capital and the creative sector in the modern world. It’s cities that increasingly compete with each other for investments, jobs and talent, which create new ideas and opportunities.

The presentation of a film about five global cities – Austin, Mexico, Berlin, Mumbai and Seoul – showed that the creative industry had caused an impressive shift in the social, cultural and economic areas of those cities. The film reiterated the idea that, in a post-industrial society, creativity and talent are the key drivers of economic development.

The world now has generally recognized centres for creative industries and innovations: London, New York, Singapore, Tokyo, and San Francisco. What needs to be done for Russian cities to catch up with them?

The creative industry concept has a basic classification: arts and culture, cinema and TV, design and architecture, fashion, digital technology, crafts, publishing, advertising and marketing, media and communications, and may have country specifics. For instance, Italy has food.

Today’s Russia has no approved creative industry classification and no statistics or studies are available for this area. At the same time, business and government see a big potential in it.

To assess the situation, a pilot version of the Creative Capital Index (CCI) has been proposed based on nine cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Ekaterinburg, Krasnodar, Novosibirsk, Tyumen, Voronezh and Nizhny Novgorod. The study used around 200 indicators grouped into five basic categories: City, People, Business, Government, and Brand. A huge database of creative projects and startups was collected in the process. Interactive maps of those cities’ creative environments have been compiled.

Alexei Kudrin, Chairman of the Board of the Centre for Strategic Research Foundation and Deputy Chairman of the Economic Council under the President of the Russian Federation, noted that the creative industry generates new services and has been growing by 14% annually even during the crisis. We will take this experience into account in drafting the National Development Strategy for 2018–2024.

The creative sector is very attractive. Accounting for 3% to 8% of the economy, it contributes 5–9% to the nation’s GDP. Whereas in London or Berlin its share is 6–9%, it only constitutes 1–1.5% in St. Petersburg.

The world is changing right before our eyes. The creative sector will be growing, mainly in cities, and plans should be made for this. We have no strategy for this area at this time, a fact that also needs to be taken into account in the education process in schools and universities.

The creative industry will absorb the workforce freed up as a result of the transition to a new robotized technology. According to a forecast by the World Economic Forum at Davos, by 2020 priority will be given to comprehensive problem solving, critical thinking and creativity.

Andrei Nikitin, acting Governor of the Novgorod Region, said that his Region had a big historic capital. Our objective is to convert this capital into creativity. He believes special tools need to be developed to support the creative industry.

Andrei Chibis, Deputy Minister of Construction, Housing and Utilities of the Russian Federation, said that “creative capital won’t grow in dirt and greyness. We underestimate the importance of the advent of a digital world.” He continued: “Our objective is to create a new urban environment for people of a new generation. Management teams on both the federal and regional levels should focus on this objective. We need to put cities in good order over the next five years. We lack competencies in this area to understand what is good and what is bad. We need to build on global expertise. City improvements kick-start development of small and medium-sized businesses. We must develop small towns and look for special features in each of them. New cities need to be built taking into account all economic development drivers and objectives.”

Alexander Dybal, member of the Management Board, Deputy General Director for Corporate Communications of PAO Gazprom Neft, spoke about how his company had reengineered its social policies a few years ago and adopted a philosophy of social investment. To this end, it has established the Native City programme, which envisages steps to improve the quality of life instead of construction of social infrastructure. Alexander Dybal said: “We are doing everything we can to create a comfortable environment for people in small Siberian towns. Since we are an oil and gas company and operate mainly within our industry, we engage specialists in that area to carry out the programme.”

Igor Lotakov, Managing Partner of PwC Russia, said that his company was trying to raise awareness in the area of creativity. According to the “The World in 2050” forecast, Russia could become the leading nation in Europe in terms of GDP. It would be difficult to achieve this without investing in the creative sector. Igor Lotakov believes the fundamental economic structure is shifting. While, in the past, costs were cut by expanding production, today this is achieved through implementation of IT. The globalization process is coming to an end. Fragmentation around historic territories is taking place. The 21st century is a century of creativity and innovation. The Creative Capital Index may be made part of regional governors’ KPI.

Jordi Sellas i Ferrés, Strategy and Innovation Advisor for Creative and Cultural Industries of the Government of Catalonia, said that some 50,000 people in Barcelona were employed in the creative sector and generated some EUR 4.0 billion in sales. Since the 1992 Olympics, Barcelona has become a creative hub, while Quarter 22, an industrial area until 25 years ago, has been transformed into a new city centre. Mr. Ferrés believes spaces need to be created where people would find it interesting to live. For this, business and government need to collaborate productively. New forms of interaction need to be created. For instance, in the creative sector, we use repayable loans as risk capital, but more than 80% of the funds are paid back. Creativity is an innovative driver for economic development. Ten years from now, following the fourth industrial revolution, robots will be performing most of the work, so the creative sector has a promising outlook and a vast development potential.