The Role of Local Creative Entrepreneurs In Shaping Creative Cities in Indonesia Early Rahmawati, MA and Dr. Dessy Irawati 1 Introduction of Creative Industries The Phrase of Creative Industries (in economic scale we called Creative Economy) refers to a set of interlocking industry sectors and often cited as being a growing part of the global economy. The creative industries as mentioned by Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity of UNESCO are activities that focus on creating like arts or design and exploiting intellectual property products; such as music, books, film and games, or providing business‐to‐business creative services such as advertising, public relations, and direct marketing. 2 In this term aesthetic live performance experiences are also generally included, contributing to an overlap with definitions of art and culture, and sometimes extending to include aspects of tourism and sport. Economic activities focused on designing, making and selling objects or works of art such as jewelry, fashion or haute couture, books of poetry or other creative writing, or fine art also often feature in definitions of creative economic sector because the value of such objects derives from a high degree of aesthetic originality. UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) had definition about creative industry: “The creative industries (1) are the cycles of creation, production, and distribution of goods and services that use creativity and intellectual capital as primary inputs; (2) constitute a set of knowledge‐based activities, focused on but not limited to arts, potentially generating revenues from trade and intellectual property rights; (3) comprise tangible products and intangible market objectives; (4) are at the cross‐road among the artisan, services and industrial sectors; and (5) constitute a new dynamic sector in the world trade”. 3 However then UK Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Task Force 1998, defined that “Creative industry as those industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent, and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property and content”. 4 Thus the creative industry is one sector of the economy that emphasizes the importance of human resources to produce innovative works, in which Indonesia's diverse cultural background becomes a significant part in creating various works of art. Creative industries produce and distribute goods and services center around texts, symbols and images. They are a distinct cluster of knowledge‐based activities which that usually combine creative talent with advanced technology and whose output contains a comparatively large proportion of intellectual property. The most well known examples of these activities are the performing and audio‐visual arts, including music, film and TV, software, video games, publishing and broadcasting. However, the frontier of creative industries is becoming blurred, as technology advances make possible the range of 1 This paper is part of the book ‘Emerging Knowledge Economies in Asia – Current trends in ASEAN 5’ Edited by Dessy Irawati and Roel Rutten, Published by Routledge 2014 2 Cf. Global Alliance for Cultural Diversity UNESCO: P. 3 online in Internet 3 Saputra, W. (2010): P. 10 4 Saputra, W. (2010): P. 9