Creative Industries Full Report

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ESRC Business Engagement Project:A scoping study of contemporary and future challengesin the UK creative industries

Dr Jonathan Sapsed

AIM Innovation Fellow, Principal Research Fellow, CENTRIM, University of Brighton

Juan Mateos-Garcia

Research Officer, CENTRIM, University of Brighton

Dr Richard Adams

AIM Associate Director Business Engagement, Cranfield School of Management

Professor Andy Neely

AIM Deputy Director, Cranfield School of Management

June 2008

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Table of contents

1 Executive summary..........................................................................................................32 Introduction......................................................................................................................5

2.1 Creative industries - background...............................................................................52.2 Report aims................................................................................................................6

3 Method..............................................................................................................................74 Emergent themes..............................................................................................................8

5 Conclusions.....................................................................................................................286 Addendum ......................................................................................................................29

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1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Funding councils are especially concerned with eliciting feedback on the challenges incontemporary management practice. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) hascommissioned a series of scoping studies

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to report on contemporary and future challengesacross a range of areas of UK economic activity (the creative industries, financial servicessector, management consulting, marketing practice and, the retail sector). Here, we report onthe findings relating to the UK Creative Industries.The report introduces a set of management challenges and a brief review of selected previousresearch addressing them. It is intended for use by policy makers and those who fundacademic research who are working with practitioners and academics to deliver morerelevant, targeted, grounded research addressing practitioner problems. It also takes the formof a document to stimulate discussion to validate the challenges, give them flesh and identifynew ones in order to further contribute to three objectives:

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Identify priority areas for increased collaboration between practitioners in theCreative Industries sector and the Higher Education sector;

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Identify the extent to which agendas in the research community overlap with andaddress managers’ priorities in the UK Creative Industries sector in order tocontribute to the specification of a future research agenda, and;

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Begin to define the territory where the results of relevant previous research can beidentified, synthesised, be better communicated and applied to a practitioner audience.Following interviews with a number of marketing practitioners, and triangulation withpublished reports, five overarching priority areas are identified:

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Integration and disintegration

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Understanding how innovation changes business models and markets

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The creative process and organisation

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Management capabilities and skills

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Small firms and growthOver breakfast on 18th March 2008, the ESRC Business Engagement Forum for the CreativeIndustries was held at the Royal Society of Arts in London, Chaired by Sir George Cox.Forty-nine representatives from industry, policy making, regulatory authorities, industryassociations and academia came together to reflect upon the findings presented in thisscoping study and consider how the worlds of business and Higher Education might bettercollaborate in order to address these challenges. The initial response from ESRC to theconsultation is:While there are many challenges facing the sector where higher education as a whole couldtake action with business partners, specific actions the ESRC will be taking include:

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New research on the evolving ecology of the creative sector in the UK, informed byan international comparative perspective

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See http://www.aimresearch.org/index.php/business-engagement-project