This paper provides policymakers, academics, and creative industry organisations with one of the first analyses of how much creative industries organisations are investing in R&D and engaging in innovation activities.
It finds that some of these activities and investments are highly valuable and have a big impact on creative industries organisations (CIOs), while others have a much lower impact and aren’t worth the investment. It ends with a set of recommendations for how policymakers and managers can raise the rate and impact of innovations in creative industry organisations.
Identifying ‘creative industries’ or ‘creative occupations’ can be challenging. Since the establishment of the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) in 1997, which was given a new responsibility for the’ creative industries’, policymakers and academics have spent considerable effort agreeing on definitions of ‘creative’ and designing frameworks to assign economic activities and organisations to creative categories.
One of the core objectives of the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre is to build on this work and establish a strong evidence base for the value of the creative industries, and their unique contribution to the economy. Despite being one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy, and contributing over £115bn a year to the UK, we still haven’t got a clear picture for how good CIO’s are at innovation and research and development.
This is an important research topic. Although CIO’s can operate in quite different ways to organisations in other sectors of the economy, they are still businesses, and can face similar challenges.
This paper is an analysis of the responses to a survey from DCMS carried out in 2020, designed to find out how much research and development activities were being undertaken by creative industries organisations. The survey was completed by 625 creative industry organisations based in the UK, 89% of which were firms.
Please reference this paper as:
Tether, B. (2021) R&D, design and innovation: Examining the links in the creative industries. London: Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre and the University of Manchester. Available from: https://www.pec.ac.uk/discussion-papers/r-d-design-and-innovation-examining-the-links-in-the-creative-industries
Photo by Luke Tanis on Unsplash
Related Discussion Papers
International Trade Challenges and the Effectiveness of Support Measures for the UK’s Creative Industries
The formidable challenges confronting the UK’s creative industries in the realm of exports, st…
Northern England’s Creative Industries
The Creative Industries are already a driver of growth across the UK economy. Export-intensive and m…
Creative Destruction? Creative firms, workers and residential gentrification
A new study by Tasos Kitsos, Max Nathan, and Diana Gutierrez-Posada finds only a minor influence of …
Speaking with One Voice
A fundamental remit of the BBC, and other public service broadcasters (PSBs) like ITV and Channel 4,…
Transitioning to Sustainable Production across the UK Theatre Sector
This discussion paper examines transitional pathways to sustainable theatre production in the UK. By…
Identifying and analysing UK fashion micro-clusters
The UK’s Fashion and Textiles industry contributed almost £20 billion to the UK economy in 202…
Net Zero as a catalyst in fashion micro and small enterprises
This report identifies examples of work taking place across three levels of change – social, e…
The Motives of Inbound Foreign Direct Investors in the UK Creative Industries
The UK’s creative industries have a global reach. British arts, technology, and design are internati…
Brexit uncertainty and international trade in services: Evidence from the UK creative industries 2014-2019
This discussion paper is based on one of the first studies to look at the impact of Brexit on the Cr…
Working Together – Cooperatives as a creative industry business model
This authors looks at how creative workers and students typically understand cooperatives, explore t…
Building sustainable regional music industry clusters
This report looks at the role the creative industries can play for the Levelling Up agenda, as well …
Crypto art and questions of value
Crypto Art is a novel, emerging creative form that is entirely digital, and native to the internet. …