Creating Prosperity: the role of higher education in ... - Universities UK

Creating Prosperity: the role of higher educationin driving the UK’s creative economy103.8 In an increasingly digital environment, the development of commercially successful business modelsis a critical area for innovation. Previously established business models are breaking down. Onlinenews content has hit newspaper sales, and channel fragmentation is exerting growing pressure onadvertising revenues in broadcasting. Everyone is looking for new business models, with a focus onthree main areas:• exploiting new channels• exploiting new markets• exploiting rights and new revenue streams3.9 The proliferation of media channels creates opportunity for the wider distribution and exploitationof creative content through its repackaging and re-engineering for different platforms. This kind ofchannel migration is most obviously evident for TV, advertising and publishing, where new mediachannels have started to change the ways that consumers interact with content.3.10 The creative industries have also been active in exploring new opportunities in diverse marketsegments, from health and education to security and transport. The diversification of games from itstraditional territory in entertainment into learning is a good example of this in practice, although thisis not restricted to games. For example, there is increasing use of 3-D visualisation technologies toenhance the visitor experience in heritage and tourism as well as in healthcare and defence settings.3.11 Crucially, many of the emerging business models in the creative industries depend on the ownership,protection and exploitation of intellectual property (IP) rights – typically in the form of copyright ratherthan patents – meaning that companies are seeking both to structure new kinds of deals and todevelop the kinds of content with the potential for ongoing exploitation.3.12 Therefore, while innovation in the wider economy is often conceived as functional, scientific ortechnological, resulting in a new or improved product (or process), innovation in the creative industriesis also increasingly about business models, new channels and diversification. A third and crucialelement of innovation must also be considered – that of creative, or ‘aesthetic’ or ‘soft’, innovationthat ‘reflects changes of an aesthetic nature’ (Stoneman, 2009).3.13 Aesthetic or soft innovation is at the very heart of the creative industries, and recent research (forexample Stoneman, 2009), unsurprisingly, identified very high rates of soft innovation within thecreative sector. In this analysis, such innovations were considered significant only if they were ofimmediate or short-term economic importance – a hit film, for example, or a successful new brand.However, for parts of the creative economy, economic importance will not always be immediatelyapparent. Practice-based innovation in the performing and visual arts, for instance, can and doeslead to new understanding about both the creative process and new forms of expression.3.14 Then there is the role of design as a crucial driver of innovation, not just in an aesthetic sense, butalso through the application of design thinking and strategic design in the development of newproducts, new processes and means of delivering services, including public services.3.15 Few in the sector would consider these activities important if they only led directly to an increasein sales; rather, their value will be in the knowledge that is created and subsequently disseminatedfor exploitation and use by others, even if it is not codified.3.0 Drivers of the creative economy