The orange economy involves a number of activities, including industrial, graphic, digital, and fashion design, filmmaking, theatre, television, photography, music, editorial and content industry, advertising, and the software and videogames industry.  It represents a business volume for over USD 547,000 million in the world, beating the international automotive industry.

John Howkins was one of the first to refer to the creative economy in an interview for the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), showing business and development opportunities represented by the cultural sector and the creative industry. Howkins defines orange economy (or creative economy), as “the operations (ideas) that generate creative products. Every operation can include two complementary values: the intangible intellectual property value, and the physical platform value”.

These ideas go beyond the concept and add market value for their promoters.

According to the IDB, in its report ‘Public Policies for Creativity and Innovation: Promoting the Orange Economy in Latin America and the Caribbean’, this type of economy is a tool based on policies to simultaneously stimulate the supply, the demand and the interaction among different actors in an innovative and creative ecosystem.

If the creative economy was a product, it would be the fifth largest business volume product in the world.

In the region, the creative economy is known as “orange” as this colour is associated to youth and joy.

In Latin America, this industry is growing exponentially. The countries that have grown the most have a greater contribution than the average from the industries acknowledged as creative economy.

The GDP contribution of this industry is around 2.2% in the region. In addition, its contribution to employment is about 5.3% in Latin America, and there are countries where it even reaches 7%.

According to the IDB, in order to keep on growing, it is necessary to establish and feed a creative ecosystem. This means that players from both, the private and the public sector, must be connected to this area.

The BBVA Research states that the importance of Information and Communications Technology development in Latin America is linked to a strong potential to transform societies and economies. These types of technologies reduce information and transaction costs, create new collaboration models and innovate improving access to basic services.

The access to internet and other technologies is becoming more and more relevant. It is the linking point between education and work.