Output details

Hidden Innovation in the Creative Industires

The report was amongst the first to acknowledge and detail the extent of innovation in the creative industries. It sets-out the different forms of innovation that are found in the creative sector, and examines the contribution of creative firms to innovation more broadly in the UK economy (and beyond). The report argues that a significant proportion of innovation in the creative industries is ‘hidden’ insofar as it fails to register in the main innovation and R&D surveys. This has important implications for policy making and hampers the development of adequate innovation supports and initiatives for creative businesses and their clients.

The report is founded on large-scale and original case studies of four key UK creative industries (product design, videogames, advertising, and broadcast production). The cases reveal the nuances of innovation in the creative sector and highlight the drivers for, and barriers to, innovation activity. They also unpack the processes that are deployed to generate innovations in the selected sectors, and examine the networked and distributed nature of much development activity. The examination combines qualitative work with secondary survey analysis and presents an entirely novel (‘Olympian’) model of sites of innovation in the creative milieu.

The report and the original research on which it is based was created for and funded by NESTA, the principal innovation promotion agency in the UK. It was published at a time of significant and growing interest in the value of the creative industries to the economy as a whole, and produced a number of detailed recommendations concerning improved innovation measurement, skills and capacity building, and targeted innovation support policies. Recommendations and arguments advanced in the report are deployed by governments and professional and trade associations at home and overseas, and have shaped high profile UK programmes including ‘Creative Credits’ and the ‘Innovation Index’.