Innovation and the creative industries

You know our stance on how Interactive Media is not really considered a sector in its own right and doesn't get picked up by government departments for statistical purposes – or many other purposes really. It boils down to where we get positioned in terms of being IT related or creative, as those denominations dictate the money allocation. Well, there might be a slow shift in the right direction of recognising we're a hybrid in the latest report from NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts).

"Our understanding of innovation has changed: where once it was understood to be largely the result of scientific research and development, it is now seen more widely to include changes to services, ways of working and delivery, customer insight and many other forms."

Previously they have been preoccupied with film and games as representing our form of `the creative industries'. This latest report- Measuring sectoral capability in nine areas of the UK economy' 26.11.2009 - looks at innovation in a newly-defined way and uses a correspondingly different analysis tool – the IVC (Innovation Value Chain). They chose Software and IT Services as one of their nine sectors and analysed that with their new way of describing innovation, they call `hidden innovation'. Not sure that they consider Interactive Media in this division of Software and IT services, but it does include consultancy, data processing and database design. Getting there, maybe!

We won't be surprised by the results: but they have been.

The sector reported the highest product and services innovation during 2006-9 compared to other sectors. This is a key indicator for NESTA's IVC. The average levels of innovation capability were relatively high when compared to other sectors in the report. They were surprised by the intensive team-working involved in the sector to access knowledge. Ah! Cross-functional teams strike again!

Take a look if this snippet tempts you at www.nesta.org.uk.