At the beginning of the 21st century, the world is moving, faster and more forcefully than expected, history is on the move again. Old structures are cracking, ancient balances are breaking under the combined effect of geopolitical, demographic, technological changes, and the ever-renewing aspirations of people for freedom and well-being.
The average wealth of nations is increasing, even if immense pockets of poverty persist. Education and knowledge are spreading, even if too many underprivileged areas remain. We cannot think about this emerging world, before our eyes, using only yesterday’s concepts. We cannot act effectively with only the methods of our forefathers.
It is in light of these upheavals that the relationship between culture and economy must be revisited. Culture has ceased to be a luxury for the rich or a pastime for the idle. It permeates all modern production processes. It fulfills the need for meaning that inhabits the human community.
Culture, as we understand it, is both a lever for action and a vital ecosystem. It constitutes an unparalleled tool for deciphering a complex world and adapting to a volatile environment. There can be no true creativity, whether artistic, economic, or even political, without a true cultural substrate.
It is also an ecosystem that is highly sensitive to human action, recording all its impacts. In the technological age, this burgeoning activity can affect the delicate balances that make up cultural richness: unity and diversity, material and immaterial, heritage and creation, avant-gardes, and the general public.
It is time to invent, between these two fundamental activities that are culture and economy, a virtuous articulation that does not reduce to a pure instrumentalization of the first and a vain stigmatization of the second.
It is time to propose a method discourse through which all the active potentialities of culture will be valued and all the human values of the economy will be prioritized.
It is time to play the long-term against the short-term, value creation against resource waste, synergy against every man for himself, ethics against irresponsibility.
This untapped territory, that of a human and rooted globalization, is what the purple economy aims to explore.
Purple, color of creativity and imagination, whose shades reflect an adaptation to the peculiarities of each, as long as they respect fundamental freedoms.
From every human operation comes a cultural imprint, meaning an impact that shapes the cultural environment.
The purple economy represents the part of human activities that contribute to improving this imprint, in order to promote cultural richness and diversity in all things. This economy is transversal and, primarily concerning the immaterial, is not very resource-intensive.
It carries the seeds of a new growth, linked to better adaptation of companies to the market and greater efficiency in their operations, through understanding the motivations of the people for whom and with whom they work.
Because we all have an interest in valuing this economic potential, it is necessary to organize the purple revolution now.
