DBEDT Report Finds Hawaii’s Creative Industries Represent $3.9 Billion of Hawaii GDP
Developing Hawaii’s creative industries has become an important economic development strategy. Hawaii’s cultural diversity, its Hawaiian host culture are brand differentiators, attracting millions of visitors to our destination, while supporting a thriving creative industries cluster. The uniqueness of Hawaii’s creative, artistic and cultural sectors helps Hawaii’s creative products compete in worldwide markets, while also supporting visitor spending and developing the foundation of Hawaii’s creative economy. In addition, the creative industries and their workforce represent key sources of ideas, content creation for global export and provide the talent for Hawaii’s emerging technology and knowledge based industry sectors. The importance of this industry sector is captured in the August 2012 Hawaii Creative Industries Report.
In order to represent and track data on the range of activities that can address the broader relationship between creative industries and emerging markets for technology and entertainment, the Research and Economic Analysis Division teamed with the DBEDT Creative Industries Division to review more current definitions of creative industries and revise the scope of the activities in Hawaii’s creative sector, based in larger part on similar work in Massachusetts. This update has resulted in additional industries being added to the creative sector portfolio, such as advertising and marketing, design services, architecture, and engineering/research and development. Hawaii’s creative sectors now show the increased overlaps in elements of the technology sector, providing foundational data to further define Hawaii’s innovation industries.