Creative-driven firms. When economics and art merge

In recent years, a new idea of culture has become increasingly popular. It is a rather modern proposition, closer to the international sentiment and far from the mainstream Italian notion that conceives culture as a non-economic domain, confined solely to the conservation and enhancement of historic and artistic heritage. Creative-driven firms are all the firms which, although not part of the so-called cultural and creative business system, develop services and create products through cultural and creative processes. In these companies, covering a large and diversified area of the market (from food to furniture, design to construction, fashion to tourism, etc.), culture is considered as an input of the production process. In this new way of doing business, it is possible to combine art and economic growth. Our research goal is to provide a new idea of business in which art is the main input of the production process. Starting from the artistic endowment of the Campania region, we aim at identifying the presence of a fertile ground for the development of creative-driven firms in Campania. To this aim we use an experimental project (ContaminationLab Uniparthenope) as a potential ground in which interaction between economists and experts of the artistic field, combine the principles of swot analysis with those of art.