The IP Day (April 26) program put on by the Institute for Policy Innovation was a high-quality affair, with a series of entertaining and educational panels and speakers. One of the best was on Creative Development: Countries Building Creative Industries, with Victor Tieku (CEO, Kampsite Music – Ghana); Stephen Siwek (Principal, Economists, Inc.); and Mark Schultz (Prof., So. IL Univ. School of Law).

Schultz is the author, along with Alec van Gelder of the International Policy Network, of Nashville in Africa:  Culture, Institutions, Entrepreneurship and Development (Nov. 2008), a fascinating case study in what is (in Nashville) and what might yet be (in Africa) when and if intellectual property rights are used to tap into the creativity of the people.  (A more detailed account was published in the Kentucky Law Journal and is available via SSRN.)

The executive summary starts with some scene-setting:

Nashville, Tennessee, was once a struggling city in one of the poorest regions of the United States. Like much of sub-Saharan Africa today, early 20th century policymakers pinned Nashville’s economic hopes on industrial development founded on access to raw materials and large, government-funded public works projects. These hopes were never fully realised, but Nashville found success anyway – from its creative industries.

Three ingredients led to the emergence of a country music industry in Nashville:

• Strong and unique cultural traditions, particularly in musical story-telling;
• A strong and stable legal institutional environment, which offered protection to property rights, including copyright;
• Conditions which provided the prospect of financial return for the investments of forward-thinking entrepreneurs.

The unique talents and abilities of local artists were overlooked when government planners sought to invigorate Nashville’s economy. These skills were ridiculed at the time and local output was pejoratively referred to as “hill-billy” music.

Nevertheless, it was this talent that convinced entrepreneurs to make the significant investments that were required to bring modern recording and production technology to Nashville-based artists.

It goes on to discuss the factors that led to Nashville’s success, including the importance of the legal environment: “Without the stable legal environment that existed in the United States . . .the entrepreneurs involved would not have invested . . . .  Copyright . . . proved the key [to] . . . transforming Nashville into an economically vibrant city.”

The authors also identify some of the key reasons that “creative clusters” can be “powerful drivers of development”:

• They play to local strengths, taking advantage of knowledge, skills and forms of expression that arise from local culture, and are thus, by definition, largely unique and non-duplicable.
• For the most part they do not require cutting-edge technology, large capital investments, or a robust infrastructure.
• Although creative work often requires a significant personal investment in training and development, it typically does not require the sort of extensive formal educational system that still remains unavailable to the poor in many less developed countries.

The body of the paper analyzes the Nashville experience, compares it with the development of reggae in Jamaica, considers why no African Nashvilles exist (though Victor Tieku is trying), and concludes with a number of policy recommendations.

My first reaction to reading Nashville in Africa is enthusiasm – what a fine piece of work! A classic of analysis for both IP and development!

My second reaction is a generalized frustration with many people and organizations. Included are the free culture advocates who refuse to look realistically at the human impact of their recommended policies; international companies that free ride on the work of the poor in the underdeveloped world; content companies that see no need to support and promote analyses such as this or to make common cause with defenders of property rights generally; an economic development club that persists in its history of 60 years of central planning failures; an academic IP community devoted to eliminating IP; US politicians (and their supporters) who do not grasp the importance of property rights in creating the bounty of the US economy; and underdeveloped nations themselves, which won’t protect their home-grown creativity while they complain about both poverty and the dominance of US cultural products.

I need a word for the blogging equivalent of Road Rage.