Good question. I don't have a conclusive answer but I would say that for my industry at least (advertising), France is much less creative than the English-speaking countries. In the English-speaking countries there's a big focus on trying to make cool ads in new formats that no one has ever seen before, but France is still very much focused on the traditional mediums of TV commercials and prints.

As far as I can tell, France is more interested in perfecting an existing craft than inventing a new one. I feel like this kind of thinking also applies to things like art, literature, fashion and cuisine too — tastes can be quite conservative and not really avant-garde. There doesn't appear to be the same 'Give it a go' pioneering spirit that you can find in the so-called New World. There's nothing wrong with this, of course, but if you want to see more innovative things, you're better off looking elsewhere.

As for government services, I don't know if they've ever been creative in any country. And I'd say that French bureaucracy has been bad since at least the time of Napoleon.

I think that you can look at countries in terms of how tolerant they are towards ambiguity. France tends to be very ambiguity-intolerant, and that seems to manifest itself in strict government regulation and a suspicion of innovation. Europe lags far behind the US when it comes to start-ups because the cultural norms and the strict laws stifle new business creation.