In the tradition of the Hills Hoist and the wine cask, Australia has scored another world's first according to UK-based company director, consultant and author of "The Creative Economy" John Howkins.

Addressing an Australian Business Foundation business briefing as part of National Science Week, John Howkins paid tribute, with some amusement, to Australia as the originator of the first and perhaps only Government report to contain a recommendation exhorting the nation to use its imagination and wit. He was referring to the 1992 "Creative Nation" arts policy by the then Keating Government.

But a central point in John Howkins' work is that artists don't have a monopoly on creativity. It can equally be the province of scientists, of business people, and even, of economists.

Howkins presents a simple definition of creativity – generating something new. But he specifies the attributes of a creative idea that works, as being personal (ie, it's yours, owned by the person it springs from); original (ie, no one else has had it); meaningful (ie, you can communicate it to others) and practical (ie, it is useful).

How to make money from ideas brings the economy into the picture. This is what interests the Australian Business Foundation:

• how creativity can be a key driver of commercial advantage and sustained business performance;
• how firms and industries can compete through creativity, leveraging ideas and innovation to generate real growth.

There is a wealth of scholarship on just how decisive intangible assets like know-how, skills, design and intelligence are to successful business performance in today's volatile, knowledge-based economy.

The transition from mind to market, from the creative idea to the saleable product and knowing the difference is a critical factor in the relationship between business success and creativity.

John Howkins emphasises that managing creativity is a disciplined process. In particular, he urges us to take a closer look at intellectual capital, patents, reputation and brands. Intellectual property is not an arcane technical matter to be left to the lawyers, but the active ingredient for business competitiveness for any enterprise that deals in ideas and inventions.

Individuals and businesses need to be able to protect their own ideas and to value, literally to take account of, what their enterprise knows. They have to recognise and then unleash their intellectual capital, which is often hidden or obstructed by hierarchical structures or operational rules.

At the core is a company identifiying its own distinctive know-how and generating fresh capabilities from ideas.

Howkins in The Creative Economy reminds us that "it is likely that the world's intellectual capital exceeds the value of its financial and physical capital. In other words, the intangible value of what we have created, may exceed the value of the physical material that surrounds us".

To give an example – health care depends on the staff's total knowledge about medical and nursing matters; not just accredited professional skills, but everything they know about doing their job effectively from comforting visiting relatives to the logistics of management of a ward.

Another example of intellectual benefits exceeding financial benefit is the theatre producer who spends $50,000 on producing a play and sells $50,000 worth of tickets. The accounts will show nil assets and nil liabilities, but the producer has accumulated valuable know-how in the form of skills, competencies and contacts to improve his likelihood of future success.

Identifying, tracking and managing intellectual capital is a key message in achieving business success through creativity.

From his 20 years at the forefront of the multimedia, entertainment, communications industries, John Howkins' conclusion about the convergence of the creative and conventional economies is summed up in one key quote:

"People with ideas – people who own ideas – have become more powerful than people who work machines and in many cases, more powerful than people who own machines".