Similar Patterns of Cultural and Creative Industries. A Preliminary Analysis Based on Self-Organized-Map to the Italian Case

In recent years, there has been a widely belief that creativity, going hand in hand with innovation and knowledge creation, readily translates into regional competitiveness. In the same time, cultural and creative industries (CCI) industrial pattern have been attracting a growing interest from a wide range of academic research and policy interventions. The aim of this article is to establish a better understanding of relevant industry relevance (RIR) of geographic samples with a relevant similarity in terms of industrial patterns and not of industry concentration. In this sense, we move from a methodological approach, based on Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) by comparing patterns of local employment. The Italian case provides an interesting case study to analyze industrial patterns by offering new insights of occupational dynamics. We conclude that this paper represents a firs explorative attempt to extend the previous literature to seize the overall productive structure of the local creative economy.