SERIES

WP04-CIG-2026-04 — Comparative Models: Evaluation Architecture for Investment-Led Creative Growth

Investment, Inclusion and Transmission in the UK Creative Economy (CIG-2026)

WP4 examines value capture: when creative output scales, who captures the value, and what governance or market structures shape that capture? It focuses on openness regimes, IP arrangements, platforms, and contractual norms.

Summary

The paper interrogates extraction pathways that allow growth to occur without shared benefit. It treats openness as a design choice with distributional consequences, not an unqualified public good.

What this output shows and why it matters

WP4 shows how creative growth can intensify inequality if value capture is structurally asymmetric. This matters because ‘growth’ can be real while wages, rights, and bargaining power stagnate.

How it fits the series logic

WP4 provides the distributional logic that often explains labour outcomes observed in WP2 and the institutional patterns analysed in WP3. It also informs WP5 by clarifying why diffusion can be weak even when output scales.

How to read this

Quick route: read the core capture mechanisms and the section on platform and contractual dynamics. Deeper route: read the counter-position that defends openness, and note the conditions under which openness can be genuinely enabling.

Outputs it connects to

Related: WP2 (labour) and WP3 (institutions). Next: WP5 (regional diffusion) and RP1 (synthesis).

Citation

Creative Enterprise Lab (2026) WP04-CIG-2026-04 — Comparative Models: Evaluation Architecture for Investment-Led Creative Growth.  CIG-2026 Working Paper.