SRA bekend gemaakt op ICTDelta

De afgelopen maanden is door diverse leden van IIP CREATE gewerkt aan het opstelleen van de de Strategische Research Agenda (SRA) voor de Creatieve Industrie. Op 8 mei zal deze SRA officieel gepresenteerd worden tijdens ICTDelta, het Nationale ICT Innovatiecongres.

The creative sector

Economy growth relies on ideas, skills and quality to excel, on entrepreneurship, on the work force to make it happen and ultimately on society where all these aspects are rooted. We live in an era where the value system of society changes rapidly as a result of  the rise of the ‘creating’ class. The ‘creating’ class forms a new economic sector where relative autonomy, creativity, a networked context, and (large-scale) production of small-scale expressions define its work ethos. At the core of the ‘creating’ class is information, communication and media. This definition – similar to the one of CPB – is covers 30% of the workforce. Information, communication and media ICM are at its core.

The potential

Estimation of the economic perspective in standard ways is hard as data about this new sector lag behind. Nevertheless there is ample evidence of a considerable impact in times where technology becomes invisible, hardware is cheap, and content becomes invaluable. Dutch design rightfully acquires great fame, yet this results in limited impact in economic or social terms. Economically, small scale leads to a gap between idea and production, and to limited market exploitation, and to economic sensitivity. What is needed is complete ecosystems with science, inspiration, and production insight. Coordination problems occur when engineers and creatives do not find one another, and when knowledge and information are fragmented. Multidisciplinary projects may remedy this. Barriers to entry are mostly due to a lack of real communications, whereas foreign operators acquire data about all our (online and offline) habits. Socially, the rise of the ‘creating’ class has an enormous impact on the participation in (virtual) communities to restore coherence, narrowing the digital divide, and introducing new ways of living in the city. Such fields as healthcare will be impacted by information, communication and instruction, woven around the home. Culturally, developments in ICM will also change the way we create, distribute, preserve and participate. There is co-creation and re-creation, there is social participation and there is the impact on tourism, when all digital content is semantically accessible. The impact of the ‘creating’ industry on learning is inevitable, desperately needed to balance the excitement of Internet and games at home. The potential is illustrated by experts with scenarios for 2015 on games, shopping, cultural heritage, public health, hospitality, culture and education, and eGovernment.

In the Netherlands

Whereas the rise of the ‘creating’ class occurs world-wide, we focus on the changes in the Netherlands. The life-style of consumers will be creative and personalized, supplied with mass-produced individual ‘expression’. In society, dependable collaboration at a distance will be essential. Where broadband introduces the whole world into the living room, proximity will paradoxically gain in importance. In science and technology there is an apparent lack of a coherent agenda, as opposed to foreign countries which invest heavily in this field. We can take advantage of innovation models and ways of working suiting the Dutch. Our excellent infrastructure provides an opportunity to invest in content, at the same time also creating more information for the content providers abroad. Therefore, we must invest in Dutch search engines and experience labs. Current government instruments need improvement as they do not suit creative research well. Creative entrepreneurship has been successful as the new way of life for SMEs and ZZPs. However, innovation here is stalling. To complicate matters, classic intellectual property rights are fading away on a global scale, putting pressure on creative business models. The first to experiment with the new IPR wins. In conclusion, we have identified trends, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that are important to create the winning ecosystem in the Netherlands. The Netherlands have a good potential advantage. At the same time, physical proximity is important, as are ecosystems with creatives, production knowledge, research, diversity and chains in operation. It is our vision to create world-class ecosystems of the creative sector, by creating coherence between knowledge centers, industry and the non-profit leaders in regional contexts. Example ecosystems are presented in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Eindhoven^,, Rotterdam, and the NIRICT.

The Strategic Agenda

In workshops and interaction with the field, we have identified the most vital themes to develop. Themes with the highest potential of success and a sense of urgency have been coupled with tools for broad support in the field.  The five themes are search & find, contextivity about the importance of context exploration, virtual and real worlds, collaboration as a way of life, and interactive and tangible environments. Nine tools are discussed: instruments for interaction, location-based infrastructure, tools for data worlds and building real & virtual worlds, labs such as world experience labs and living labs. Abstracts are included for equally important measures such as policies for property rights, entrepreneurship of the creatives, and research of the creatives. For each theme and each tool we argue why the Netherlands is an excellent place to endorse its development. Per theme and tool also, we indicate immediate stakeholders in the Netherlands. The chapter is illustrated with working examples.

Creating a winning ecosystem

This agenda proposes a mix of long-term research with short term demonstrations and high-profile applications, consequently to form new chains of knowledge for an enduring advantage. We focus on the ‘hottest’ spots supporting local initiatives, wherever they originate. We aim to introduce vouchers for the production of creative ideas, creative pioneer vouchers, and creativity vouchers for the production industry and coaching. For the restoration of chains, we aim to build large-scale programs and new reward systems. For community building, we suggest public awareness programs, registration of best practices, and the maintenance of open-source technological sources. We suggest a few programs on education. We suggest a PhD on the basis of a work of art and on the basis of a start-up company. And, we aim to develop a program for stipends to artists, and for public broadcasting to be a lead customer.  The chapter is illustrated with information on the EU, which proposes 2009 as the Year of Creativity and Innovation, and other programs.

IIP/CREATE

The Strategic Agenda was produced by the program board of IIP/CREATE and created in discussion with industry, non-profit institutes, SMEs, universities, HBOs and academies, platforms and intermediaries, and supported by ICTRegie.