(This article is an outline of the author’s speech at the International Seminar on Leisure and Cultural Creativity held on November 18-19, 2017)

In the context that the scrambling of industrial innovation talents becomes increasingly fierce and industrial innovation and development becomes the key factor, the development of Chinese creative economic talents must be further studied, symmetrically deployed and rapidly promoted. In the 13th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Strategic Emerging Industries issued by the State Council in 2016, the digital creative industry ranked among five new pillar industries with a production value of RMB10 trillion. It was the first time to include the digital creative industry into the national strategic emerging industrial plan, which mainly included digital cultural creative equipment, digital culture content, design services. Therefore, this put forward new tasks and challenges to the development of creative economic talents.

I. Problems existed

First, creative economic talents are not able to lead the innovation and development of the creative economy.

The development of the creative economy that is at the forefront of industrial innovation has raised high requirements on the scale and quality of talents and practitioners in the creative economy. Currently, reserves of talents in the field are not able to play leading and supporting roles, resulting in a great gap in the demand for creative economic talents.

Second, the development of talents in the creative economic has not been given due attention.

Because the characteristics, role and value of creative economic talents are difficult to be defined with the traditional evaluation system, and the creative economy is an emerging industry itself, the development of creative economic talents has not been given due attention, and the investments of such resources as systems and funds have remained insufficient.

Third, the introduction, evaluation and incentive of creative economic talents are restricted by the reality.

Because talents in such new economy as the creative economy have paid more attention to ability than educational background and a higher marketization degree, there are still many realistic restrictions in introducing, evaluating and stimulating these talents due to institutional deficiency.

Fourth, the cultivation and supply of creative economic talents lacks systematic planning and promotion.

From culture industry management, information technology to artistic design, all of the discipline systems have no solid support and systematic planning for training creative economic talents.

II. Basic thinking

The development of Chinese creative economic talents must be based on the background of competition of international and domestic innovative talents. Specifically, efforts must be made to carry out the decisions and deployments of the Central Government for accelerating the implementation of the innovation development strategy and deepening the talent development system and mechanism reform, rapidly promote the implementation of talent policies at all levels in the development of the creative economic industry and the reform and innovation, and construct a global creative economic talent highland with a prominent agglomeration effect, active innovation and entrepreneurship, and powerful leading and controlling abilities.

III. Innovative measures

First, improve the strategic positioning for the development of creative economic talents.

Attention and support must be given to the construction and improvement of professional creative economic talents in aspects of talent policy innovation, talent project design and talent fund arrangement.

Second, formulate policies for the development of creative economic talents.

A better comprehensive environment must be created for the development of creative economic talents.

Third, define the core capacity system for creative economic talents.

Because it’s not easy for creative economic talents to stand out in the traditional talent evaluation system, their core ability structure must be defined at the level of the innovative talent evaluation and identification, which provides core evaluation indicators and structured basis for evaluating and identifying market-based creative economic talents, and gives a clear guidance for cultivating and training creative economic talents.

Fourth, optimize service management for creative economic talents.

Efforts must be made to strengthen the prediction for the demand for creative economic talents, formulate and timely update a catalogue for talents of key areas of the creative economy, and establish an assessment and evaluation information platform for creative economic talents, so as to provide support and guarantee for the growth, development and benign flow of creative economic talents with the methods and means in line with the laws of the market economy.

(Li Meng is a research fellow of Shanghai Academy.)