Identification and analysis of current and preferred approaches national cultural industries based on stakeholders view

Cultural industries are those industries whose main functions are to create, produce, and commercialize themes with cultural nature in the form of products or services, and include industries like computer games, toys, publication, fashion and clothes. Given cultural, social, economic and even defensive importance of cultural industries, these industries play an important role in different aspects of national development.
Despite different functions of cultural industries, statistics show that there is a gap between current and desired status in their different branches. Bridging this gap requires developing desired status for these industries and designing and developing a set of policies and strategies to achieve it. One of the requirements for developing effective vision and strategies for cultural industries is to identify current and desired approaches regarding them.
The primary question of this paper is: “what are the current approaches regarding national cultural industries, and what are the desired approaches?”
The method used in this paper was identifying possible or alternative approaches to cultural industries by literature review, and then identifying current and preferred approaches by surveying cultural industries stakeholders with a close-ended questionnaire. Cultural industries innovation system model was used to identify stakeholders. Finally, the research methodology, survey questions and results were validated through in-depth interview with 5 cultural industries experts and the alternative approaches were modified accordingly.
Survey results analysis shows that "controlling, defensive and security" approaches are currently dominant regarding national cultural industries; however desired approaches, in order of importance, should be economic, social, and political.