Innovation Festival Milano

Innovation Festival Finale in Milan brings the question “What IF we discussed the future of creative industries?” into focus. In combined efforts IF Finale on February 27 and 28 presents the unique IF experiences of six cities across Europe: Barcelona, Milan, Kortrijk, Lisbon, Vilnius and Tallinn. On two days keynote speeches, roundtables, panels and discussions with high ranking and influential politicians, representatives and experts will lead to create a practical vision of an European Creative Industries Alliance (ECIA).

We asked the experts beforehand. Thus having a small series of interviews in profoundly introducing IF´s urgent agenda. The Austrian manager and expert Lucia Seel kindly provides the opening interview. She is Project Manager with CREA.RE creative regions INTERREG IVC on behalf of the Regional Government Authority Upper Austria Department of Cultural Affairs and Expert member of the European Forum for Clusters in Emerging Industries.

 

Ms. Seel, can established enterprises and industries learn from the creative industries? What is the academic’s position in this dialogue?

The creative industries are - by definition - dealing with creativity in a large sense, they develop and test permanently innovative ideas. Their main “productivity factor” or their capital is the individual’s creativity, the search for originality in finding new products or services as solutions to problems or just driven by the desire to make a difference towards a better world. Additionally, one of their characteristics is the rather small size of their businesses which drives them towards (more or less) specialised networks where cooperation solves capacity bottle-necks. They are quick and flexible and fond of experimenting with new technologies. Now put all these abilities to the service of other companies (particularly SMEs) from other industries, which generally stay focused on their industrial (technological) competences. Through such a dialogue and cooperation between the creative industries and “traditional” sectors the door is opened for new perspectives generating innovation.

But I would claim that also the creative industries can learn from the established industries: through the interaction they are confronted with, and get access to technologies, production or services processes, materials, business knowledge that they can process and incorporate into their creative process for other ideas or solutions. So in the end, through such a dialogue, a win-win situation is being created.

 

Regarding the academic position: A study produced by creative wirtschaft austria shows that (in Austria) a high, over the average ratio of university graduates (29%) and students (9%) are owners and employees in creative industries. In this way this emerging sector becomes an important link between science, research and business applications and is able to catalyse the process of transforming the research results into market opportunities.

 

In which branches can we divide the European creative industries? Is an alignment within EU countries foreseeable?

I am afraid that I personally do not have the answer to the first question. To give you a concrete example: in the CREA.RE - creative regions INTERREG IVC project 12 partners discussed and debated very intensively this issue, trying to find a common denominator for their own regional/national definitions. Without success. All I can give you is an Austrian answer: architecture/design/music, books and artistic activity/radio & TV/software & games/video & film/advertising/libraries, museums as well as botanical and zoological gardens. I miss in this complex equation the term “cultural”, which often appears together with the creative industries, building the CCI – “cultural and creative industries”. But when trying to see exactly what each term stands for, the borders between them are difficult to set. This is why I think and hope that a harmonized definition at European level shall be soon available.

 

What´s the Austrian position in relation to creative industries?

Austria has successfully developed a policy mix at national and regional level. At national level the initiative “evolve – creative industries in Austria” was set up for the period 2008-2013. The aim is to exploit and develop the innovation potential of creative industries by supporting through a portfolio of measures all of its subsectors (branches), all over Austria and at all stages of business maturity. It also encourages “traditional” companies who have recognized the potential value of creative services and wish to evolve themselves in this direction.

On the other hand, at regional level, policy makers developed cluster structures as support measures for a stronger, faster and sustainable development towards increased regional competitiveness.

 

Can you explain to us cluster collaboration/cluster networking in just three sentences?

I’ll try.

- Collaboration happens (or it should happen) per se within the cluster. Time has come to look for opportunities beyond the cluster “borders”: both in terms of geography and sector, with peers or complementing partners. Or all at the time.

- If clusters (organisations) want their member companies to innovate through interaction/collaboration, then the cluster organisations should actively demonstrate their capability to network in order to generate new opportunities for their members.

- Cooperate or die. Sounds dramatic, but I doubt that in maximum 3 years from now there will be any cluster operating alone, without any connection to external partnerships/networks/alliances – be they formalized or not. But if there will be such examples, it would be worth case-studying them, their performance, particularly with regard to the return on investment of the public money.

 

Will a transnational initiative like the European Creative Industries Alliance (ECIA) replace public funding by individual Member States in the future?

A transnational initiative like the European Creative Industries Alliance should enable, catalyse and promote collaboration between the various creative industries actors (be it at political level – regional/national/European – or at implementation level - clusters).  I think it is enough, at this stage, to bring such a mechanism into motion and make it operate successfully generating win-win situations for its members. And when ECIA reaches maturity, there are some good examples in Europe on how transnational public funding structures work: the “Innovation Express” initiative developed within the TACTICS INNO-Net under the PRO INNO Europe® initiative is such an example.

 

How are the regions represented within a Creative Europe?

Regions play without doubt a key role in the implementation process of the goals of a European Creative Industries Alliance – translated, of course, into their own goals fitting into the regional strategy.

It is important to mention that regions already started working together in numerous INTERREG IVC projects dealing with the issue of creative industries, INTERREG IVC being an Objective 3 (European Territorial Cooperation) programme supported by the European Regional Development Fund. These projects represent an important pool of knowledge consisting of good practices, policy recommendations, methodologies for policy development in the creative industries sector from which the European Creative Industries Alliance can only profit. 6 such projects will present in Milan their activities and achievements in the name of their 70 European partners (cumulated), but there are more projects and partners than just these 6 in the whole programme. By fostering dialogue, by shaping the environment to share knowledge and experience, ECIA has a genuine potential to become the beating heart of a Creative Europe.

 

2010LAB.tv joined media partnership with Innovation Festival Finale in Milan.

 

Foto (Teaser): suvodeb (Flickr) some rights reserved