Where will the next billion creatives come

In China, India, Africa, and elsewhere, shopping, streaming, and other technologies are advancing.

After decades of doing business in China, I can tell you that the Chinese can take a test but not innovate. Their creativity is lacking. They steal our IP because they’re not entrepreneurial or innovative.

Little has changed in 2023, yet everything has. The US Financial Times covers Chinese corporate espionage, while China Daily promotes global innovation. The Financial Times asked the FBI how much China damages the US by stealing trade secrets, pirating software, and counterfeiting $225–600 billion a year. China Daily claims that China is a global innovation hub. In 2018, China entered the global innovation index’s top twenty most innovative countries, according to Chinese media.

China’s accomplishments are impressive. It invented the first quantum-enabled satellite, fastest supercomputer, largest and fastest radio telescope, solar-powered expressway, largest floating solar-power plant, and thinnest keyboard. China Daily declares, “No matter how much the country’s creativity may differ from the West, China will lead the world as a global leader in science and technology by 2030.”

Indigenous innovators in the Global South are using their people as creative assets, legitimate markets, and content partners to build data products and services. Few Western creative industries tap into these global shifts due to the imitator label.

Creative class
Silicon Valley is slow to recognize creator economy geopolitical shifts. Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen describes the West’s “cultural captivity” syndrome, where theories arise from the “accidental correlation between cultural prejudice and social observation.”9 Sen discusses our tendency to imagine entire groups after correlations end.

I call it the creative caste system, where some groups are thought to be naturally creative while others are not. The nation and context of birth define groups. Gender, caste, race, and economic status affect creative perception, and poverty stigma is particularly strong. Big Tech struggles to see low-income users as consumers or creators.

Meta, Google, Amazon, Spotify, and other North American tech companies’ UX researchers attended my 2022 keynote on the next billion creatives. Many e-commerce strategists approached me after my talk to discuss live streaming for the Global South. Western consulting firms like McKinsey Digital are awakening. It published “It’s Showtime! How Live Commerce Is Transforming the Shopping Experience” in 2021. The article argues that Western businesses should use live streaming for e-commerce to combine entertainment and commerce. Western tech is discovering this new opportunity, but China already knows. Chinese creator economy matures with $20 billion market in 2021. China’s Taobao is the world’s largest live-commerce platform with 35% market share. Nearly 30% of Chinese internet users shopped live by 2020. Chinese apps realized years ago that content creators must monetize their talents and fanbases or move elsewhere. US tech struggles with interoperability and content monetization.

While Silicon Valley obsesses over blockchain and Web 3.0, India launched the Unified Payment Interface. UPI, the Indian government’s digital public infrastructure, allows instant peer-to-peer and customer-merchant payments. India has created an easy-to-use, low-cost marketplace to boost the creator economy and restore the market while Western crypto lords fight for dominance. UPI is so effective that Google has pushed the US Treasury to consider it a best practice when designing open payment system standards. Tech business analysts Vivek Wadhwa, Ismail Amla, and Alex Salkever warn against being swayed by blockchain’s “cool” factor. The real tech tool revolution lies in open standards and interoperability, where India leads the way.

More examples abound. Latin America drives e-sports and mobile game apps. African entrepreneurs are developing “data-lite” mobile apps for their budget-conscious and mobile-first customers. Abu Dhabi has become a global hub for music-streaming apps, disrupting the global music industry as the world watches Spotify treat musicians well. Anghami, a legal music streaming app, is the first Arab tech startup to list on Nasdaq. Global South entrepreneurs share much. They are constantly underestimated, must deliver profits quickly, and price-conscious customers want more value for their money. Thinking outside the box is their only option.

Outpirate pirates
Tech entrepreneurs in the Global South must innovate in piracy-ridden environments, budget-constrained users, and unreliable streaming bandwidth. The Middle East, Latin America, Asia Pacific, and Africa will account for 70% of music-streaming subscriber growth by 2028. Elie Habib, Anghami’s Lebanese cofounder, says, “Our start was to out-pirate the pirates.”

Arabic music is mostly unsigned, so Spotify doesn’t work for Arab users. Artists get more from Anghami than labels. For scaling in emerging markets, the company launched mobile-first and invested locally. Before going global, they built relationships with Middle Eastern labels and musicians. Instead of blaming piracy, educating users on streaming built loyalty. Given the unattractive venture capital deals, the startup needed to make money right away.

Where will the next billion creatives come

In China, India, Africa, and elsewhere, shopping, streaming, and other technologies are advancing.

By knl9j

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