Definitions of a modern creative economy continue to evolve. When John Howkins popularized the term “creative economy” in 2001, he applied the term to the arts, cultural goods and services, toys and games, and research and development. The most common models of the creative economy share many elements. Howkins’ creativity-based model includes all kinds of creativity, whether expressed in art or in
novation. The narrower culture-based models concentrate on arts, design and media and are normally restricted to nominated industries. The term increasingly refers to all economic activity that depends on a person's individual creativity for its economic value whether the result has a cultural element or not. In this usage, the creative economy occurs wherever individual creativity is the main source of value and the main cause of a transaction. It is possible to use the same indicators as in other economies, such as producer outputs, consumer expenditure, employment and trade. Businesses also use valuation, value chains, price and transaction data. There are additional indicators of intellectual property. However, measuring intangibles such as ideas, design, brands and style presents a challenge. Furthermore, the nature of work is different, with a high proportion of part-time workers and with many transactions being non-financial. Governments have been slow to adjust their national statistics to capture the new forms of creative occupations, productions and transactions. As a result, national data on employment, GDP and trade is often unreliable. America and the UK are in the process of adjusting their national statistics to measure their creative economies more accurately.
