SFK Releases "Global Competency White Paper for Creative Talent" in Shanghai, Proposing the C.R.A.F.T Model

AI can quickly generate images and proposals, so what do creative talents rely on to be valued by companies? Recently, Sphinx, an institution under New Oriental focused on international art innovation education, portfolio training, and art study abroad planning, released the "Global Competence White Paper for Creative Talents" in Shanghai and proposed the "C.R.A.F.T Global Competence Model for Creative Art Talents." On the same day, China's first specialized job fair focused on returnee art and creative talents was held, where companies brought job openings and students brought portfolios for face-to-face communication, so that resumes would not first be filtered out by keywords. According to the introduction, the white paper brings together cutting-edge views from experts at institutions including Tongji University, Harvard University, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of the Arts London. Participating experts generally believe that AI has lowered the threshold for drawing, software operation, and basic execution, but it cannot replace on-site research, direct feel for materials, communication with people, as well as storytelling and teamwork. The white paper summarizes this change in three sentences: execution is depreciating, judgment is appreciating; single skills are depreciating, composite capabilities are appreciating; single-region experience is depreciating, global competence is appreciating. On this basis, Sphinx proposed the C.R.A.F.T model. C stands for business acumen, answering "for whom it is made and whether it is worth it"; R stands for cultural resonance, answering "where the roots are and with whom to resonate"; A stands for aesthetic expression, focusing on the standard of works and public communication; F stands for technological mastery, emphasizing the application of new technologies and human-machine collaboration; T stands for creative judgment, reflected in every creative trade-off. Global professional literacy serves as the foundation, supporting these five capabilities in playing a role in real work. "Business acumen is difficult to cultivate through classroom teaching alone; it must be practiced through real projects and business operations," said Hao Bin, assistant vice president of New Oriental Education & Technology Group and president of Sphinx International Art Education, giving an example that a robot vacuum going overseas into the European market may need different versions because Italy lays floor tiles, France lays carpets, and Spain lays cement floors. The advantage of returnee creative talents is that they have real feelings from the collision of different cultures, but the key is to turn such feelings into business language, product language, and design language. Huo Ran, director of the School-Enterprise Cooperation Promotion Center of Intime Retail and project manager of the talent training program at Alibaba.com, saw from the front line of employment that the requirements of physical retail and overseas cross-border e-commerce for creative talents are also changing: "Talents need not only aesthetic judgment and cultural judgment under a global perspective, but also an understanding of China's local consumption habits, and the ability to translate creativity into real business." The launch event also announced that Sphinx's original "Employability Center" has been upgraded to the "Creative Talent Development Academy." Dean Zhang Li Mingzhu said that employment, career, and development are three different levels in the growth of creative talents. The paths for art and creative talents are not limited to entering companies; independent creators, self-media practitioners, art critics, and one-person creative agencies are all feasible career forms in reality. The academy's services will extend from school selection and major selection to campus recruitment, onboarding adaptation, and career advancement, connecting the link from "study abroad application to returning-home employment." In the future, Sphinx will continue to jointly build training programs based on the CRAFT standard with domestic institutions, overseas institutions, and industry associations, so that the "five craftsman capabilities" become the underlying capabilities for creative talents facing the AI era, and so that China's creative industry in the next decade can move from being able to produce works to being able to define problems, serve global markets, and enable Chinese culture to go global with high quality.