In the Second World War, the US military studied the bombers that came back from missions over Europe. The planes were riddled with bullet holes across the wings and fuselage, and the Army Air Force proposed adding armour there. The statistician Abraham Wald disagreed: the holes showed where a plane could be hit and still make it home. The armour belonged where the returning planes had no holes, because the planes hit there never came back.
UK creative economy policy keeps armouring the bullet holes. In the same week, three decisions have put money where creative success is already visible: the next wave of AHRC Creative Industries Clusters, new CoSTAR Satellite and Showcase Labs requiring co-siting with an existing studio, and a Founders' Relief that demands £10m turnover before it applies. Each is sensible on its own terms; but their combined impact "isn't an incentive to grow, it's a prize for having already grown."
Meanwhile a hidden creative economy of freelancers and micro-businesses - the planes that never came back - is still waiting to be counted.