ABSTRACT
The research using a large sample of Business and Professional Services (BPS) firms in Birmingham confirms that the competitiveness of BPS firms and therefore their ability to underpin the creative capacity of the city is derived from a combination of technical competence, the personality of individual professional and support staff, and a set of soft skills. One way to assess the opportunities and challenges is to undertake a case study of a sector that is universally acknowledged to be critical to the knowledge transfer process and therefore the creative capacity of cities. Understanding that the incorporation of knowledge into all forms of creative production is now de rigueur and the actual experience of addressing it at national, regional or city level tends to diverge. Sustaining the creativity of cities is not just about fostering dynamic clusters of creative industries; it also requires close attention to optimizing the infrastructure for enabling and delivering the development of human resource skills and training.
