Innovation in the creative and cultural sectors

[This is a repost within the Creative Innovation for Good newsletter of an article I posted under my own name. Head over to there if you want to see some additional comments.]

When?Mandy Berry?and I were running a creative industries innovation consultancy together in the early 2010s, the difference between innovation and creativity would be a regular topic of conversation over a glass of wine at the end of the day. With my background – sciency, tech-ish, business – and hers – culture, creative industries, non-profit – we would come at these ideas from different points of view.

However enjoyable the discussion, it wasn't academic. Given that we were proposing to help organisations in the creative industries innovate, we needed working definitions of creativity and innovation and a theory of how they interrelate. Back then, common challenges from creative and cultural peers were:

• Don't artists innovate every day in their work? Isn't innovation just another word for creativity?
• Isn't innovation a business-only idea that people like Accenture sell (remember those 'innovation delivered' ads)?
• Innovation is just about technology – digital technology – isn't it?

We got to explore this when we did a futures study for Innovate UK's predecessor of growth opportunities for the UK's creative industries. This focused on innovation to 'products' through the use of data and co-design with users/customers.

Having marketing driven by research or users was a commonplace but doing this with the creative products themselves was less common. In contrast to long-held participatory approaches in community arts and urban planning, it was difficult in a pre-Netflix age to imagine how data would drive innovation in TV and film content. Many in those creative sub-sectors, along with the visual and performing arts, have a long a cherished history of the experiences they create being led by creative ideas, not by 'customers'.

When?Anne Torreggiani?invited me to become the Innovation Director of cultural research and support organisation?The Audience Agency?in 2018 it was very much on me to better articulate the role of innovation in the creative and cultural sectors both internally and externally. Research agencies like evidence!

Fortunately, our organisations had already been working together on a review of the concept of 'resilience' (*What is Resilience Anyway?) by UK's largest cultural funder (Arts Council England) which touched on the role of innovation. Our review of how these concepts are understood in a range of sectors internationally provided helpful clarifications:

• The distinction between gradual, evolutionary change – perhaps exemplified most crisply by the Japanese concept of?Kaizen?– and radical or disruptive change that innovation implies.
• The characterisation by the late Richard Evans of EMC Arts of creativity as an individual activity in contrast to innovation being 'corporate' – people collaborating within and between organisations.
• To deserve the 'innovation' label, the change has to have to have demonstrable impact, be it financial within organisation(s), on the broader economy or society.

And the thousand plus cultural sector professionals we consulted in this study helped us identify preconditions for resilience they considered important, which are also often cited within research and policy literature as also necessary for innovation:

• responding to the needs of audiences, customers, visitors, users...?
• tracking financial and non-financial performance through indicators?
• processes for identifying, testing and implementing new ideas
• the financial resources to fund and knowhow to undertake R&D
• individuals open to significant change, and
• institutional willingness and ability to accept risk.

Therefore my working definition of innovation as it applies to the cultural and creative sectors is:

1. A?change?resulting from something?new?that redistributes or creates?value?for users, customers or other stakeholders.
2. The something new can be entirely new or an enhancement to something existing, created through?Research & Development?(R&D).

R&D as the?OECD define it?is not limited to products, but also including processes, ways of working, marketing, business models etc.

3. New is relative to?context: organisation, sector or geography

For example, biometric identification technologies already common in Brazil adopted more widely in the UK would be an innovation; the cultural sector borrowing sponsorship models from sport, also.

4. Without?impact?something new is 'just' an idea or invention.

Edison's lightbulb was an invention, manufacturing it at scale and putting in place electricity distribution networks to power them was an innovation. A TV programme is a creative work whereas widely adopted new ways of making them such as virtual production or successfully franchised new formats are innovations.

5. The?change?is never just the new idea – it is also required with?people?(roles, capabilities etc) and in?organisations, and the?relationships?between them.

6. Impact requires?scale?which requires?replicability?which requires?knowledge capture

It isn't enough to do R&D. We have to capture the knowledge it creates - data, methods etc – so that they are reusable by others.

Rather than innovation being just compartmentalised into a creative, marketing, product, executive corner, planning for successful innovation requires multiple?innovation activities?and disciplines to be joined up:

• Identification and mapping of new?markets.
• Generating and spotting new?ideas.
• Developing?new products, services, experiences or content through?design.
• Creating and protecting new knowledge and creative?assets.
• Systematic use of?data,?information?and?evidence.

Design by definition has a user and purpose in mind, albeit that for leisure and entertainment the purpose for an audience member may be laughing uproariously or feeling like they belong more to a place or community. Design research with current or potential users and customers is key to the 'R' of R&D.

These innovation activities will be often accompanied by the usual things that leaders and managers have to do when managing change:

• Establishing and managing?collaborations.
• Changing organisational?culture.
• Redesigning?processes?and?systems.
• Changing legal, financial and/or governance?structures.

So in conclusion, the creativity of individuals is essential to many innovation undertaken by one or more organisations. Not all innovation or wider change activities are creative. Making them working in creative organisations – and across cultural and creative supply chains, the networks of SMEs and freelancers involved in most projects – does require a creative sensibility. It's subtly different to other industrial, corporate or non-profit sectors because of the way value is created, people work and change managed.

Innovation is unashamedly and inherently framed as being about instrumental – social, economic and environmental – benefits. It's people- and user-centred approach is rooted in design. Innovation is first about value and second about money. How an innovation generates money from that value – its business model – comes after. Money is super-important, though, because people need to be paid and R&D is expensive and risky and therefore difficult to finance.

Innovation can be in creative and cultural products, services, experiences and content themselves – but equally it can be in how they are made, reach new people, make money or are financed. Thankfully, UK Research & Innovation's investment recently published priorities correct the past tendency of funders to focus on digital that's 'creative'.

Finally, with AI, big data, immersive media and a whole slew of other digital technologies fostering rapid and unpredictable change in creative work, the cultural sector and people's lives one would be forgiven for thinking that there isn't time to think about anything other than 'digital' innovation. However, there are many innovations – and many aspects of technological innovation – that are not about technology. Technology should not lead. Framing investment in change as innovation helps us all keep in mind the ends – creating value for people, enhancing our cultural and creative sectors and impacting positively on our society, economy and environment.