The Orange Economy did not emerge with the sun at an appointed time. Its intellectual history can be traced to early international efforts to re-conceptualize culture, creativity and knowledge as engines of sustainable development.
John Howkins 2007 work. “The Creative Economy: How People Make Money from Ideas” is the first detailed iteration of the idea. Another major landmark in that lineage is the 2013 Creative Economy Report, co-published by UNESCO and UNDP under the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation, which argued that creative industries are powerful tools for local development, income generation, job creation and export earnings, and laid out a set of analytical frameworks and policy recommendations for nurturing creative economies at community, regional and national levels.
That Report drew on a 2010 edition of the UNCTAD Creative Economy Report which codified empirical evidence showing that trade in creative goods and services is among the most dynamic sectors in world trade, with strong potential for developing economies seeking value beyond raw commodities. At the regional level, in Latin America the conceptual crystallization of the idea came with the publication of the book The Orange Economy: An Infinite Opportunity by Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), authored by Pedro Felipe Buitrago Restrepo and Iván Duque Márquez (2013).
That book offered a systematic framework for understanding creative and cultural industries as legitimate sectors of economic activity, from arts and heritage to design, media, digital services, and intellectual property, and articulated why creativity and cultural heritage must be treated as assets for development. The IDB report argued that if the orange economy were a country, it would rank among the world’s largest economies in export and workforce terms.
The institutionalization in Latin America also took formal shape through public policy. In Colombia the enactment of Law 1834 of 2017, known as the “orange economy law”, established a legal and institutional framework putting culture and creativity at the center of economic planning, and created a national coordinating body, the National Council of the Orange Economy (CNEN). In the years since, Colombia has committed to mainstreaming culture across multiple ministries, embedding intellectual-property protection, supporting creative SMEs, and promoting inclusion, infrastructure and market integration, the “seven I’s” of its creative-economy policy.
In Chile and other Latin American countries the conceptual shift from “cultural policy” to “creative economy policy” likewise gained traction through the establishment of creative economy offices, support for design, audiovisual, digital media, and institutional frameworks recognizing creative labour as central to national development. By tracing this intellectual history, from UNCTAD’s empirical mapping to UNESCO’s / UNDP’s global initiatives, through to the regionally grounded frameworks of the IDB and national legislation like Colombia’s Law 1834, one sees that the orange economy has acquired academic respectability, normative coherence, and institutional legitimacy.
This early Latin American foundation shaped the idea’s global diffusion and prepared conceptual ground for its later expansion into Asia. Once the digital revolution erased traditional boundaries between culture, commerce and technology, the idea gained new force. The global sector is now estimated at more than $3 trillion in value, reflecting its transformation from a niche concern into a major world economy.
As the idea moved eastward it found a receptive environment in Asia. The region’s youthful demographics, digital fluency and cultural confidence allowed the orange economy to scale rapidly. Indonesia now possesses a creative economy valued at more than $130 billion. Thailand’s creative sector exceeds $13 billion and continues to expand through film, fashion, cuisine, design and digital media. South Korea has developed a cultural export engine that surpasses $100 billion and influences global entertainment. Japan’s creative industries generate more than $20 billion annually through gaming, animation and design. Singapore has created a tightly integrated design and technology ecosystem valued at nearly $7 billion, supported by robust intellectual-property laws and cultural infrastructure.
These figures show that the orange economy is no longer peripheral. It represents a new understanding of value creation in which imagination, cultural memory and technological fluency become decisive elements of economic power. This requires new institutions, because intellectual property becomes as important as physical resources, and education systems must treat creativity as a central competency. Asian governments have begun to restructure policy frameworks accordingly. Singapore has integrated design into national planning. Bangkok and Jakarta maintain cultural districts functioning as innovation laboratories. Seoul shows that creative exports can shift global cultural influence and command enormous economic returns.
The orange economy is therefore more than a set of industries. It represents a philosophical shift in how nations conceptualize themselves and their development. Traditional models emphasize extraction, raw materials and cheap manufacturing. Creative models emphasize originality, heritage and human imagination. Nations that adopt this paradigm gain greater flexibility and a more sophisticated entry point into global markets.
This shift carries profound implications for Guyana. The country stands at a moment when resource-driven growth could either entrench old dependencies or open a path to a diversified future. The orange economy offers a structured, culturally imaginative avenue for Guyana to enter global value chains on its own terms. In my letter ‘The Geography of Our Future’ I argued that Guyana must reimagine its orientation if it hopes to escape the limitations of inherited regional attachments and conceptual constraints. The global trajectory of the orange economy reinforces that argument. It shows that nations prosper when they build institutions capable of nurturing and converting cultural intelligence into strategic economic advantage.
The relevance of the orange economy for Guyana is also heightened by the need to resist simplistic interpretations of history and development. Some local commentators argue that national progress should be guided by appeals to ‘common sense’ and nostalgia. Yet the intellectual history of the orange economy reveals that successful nations do not rely on the laziness of inherited habits. They rely on critical awareness, strategic planning, institutional capacity, and the ability to incubate and embed culture within global networks of innovation. That contrast stands in sharp relief against critics such as Eric Phillips who recently responded to earlier interventions with the suggestion that “common sense” and tradition suffice to guide national development. While Eric Phillips and his friends may be content to enjoy the common sense of pepper-pot, cane juice and chutney on the Demico parapet, for another Two Thousand Seasons (Armah), our nation must think beyond ‘liming’ as Phillips seems to prefer.
In sum, for Guyana, the ascent into the Orange Economy offers a rare chance to step beyond the inherited architecture of plantation economics and craft an identity that is ambitious, self-directed and globally resonant. Such a transformation requires more than financial investment and enthusiasm; it calls for the intellectual maturity to treat creativity as a sovereign resource, the institutional discipline to nurture it across education, policy and enterprise, and the long horizon required to build cultural products that endures. In doing so it affirms that the future belongs to nations that understand imagination as a form of infrastructure, and possesses the courage to build upon its promise. Turning South is the first and hardest step in this long, uncharted journey.