CONTRAST: Launch of the global study on innovation ecosystems

The event served to present the process of the CONTRAST project, analyse the CCIs ecosystem as a catalyst for innovation, and foster collaboration opportunities among innovative CCIs organisations and projects. 

This face-to-face event followed the second phase of CONTRAST - developed by the Department of Culture and Language Policy of the Basque Government – which built on the work done in 2021, for the design and implementation of a global study on innovation ecosystems. 

In the framework of the CONTRAST study, over 20 regions from around the world have been selected and consulted through an original methodology, with the intention to: learn about the innovation ecosystem of each of the participating regions; analyse the organisations and innovation projects in each region, and identify the trends, characteristics, and typologies that make these organisations innovative and pioneers in the sector.

The outcome is the publication of the “CONTRAST II Study CCIs and Innovation: ecosystems, typologies, measurements and impacts” presented at the event, which includes findings such as: 

1. Strategies to support and foster innovation in CCSIs are mainly led by specific actors in the cultural field.
2. Incubators, clusters and financial support programmes are the most widespread type of measures specifically designed for CCSIs.
3. The more innovation takes place, the more support in specific R&D resources is also observed. Capacities play an important role in promoting innovative activity.
4. Innovation has an important economic return for CCSIs agents: 59.1% of their income came from products in which they applied significant changes.
5. Lack of funding within the organisation (or from other private sources) appears as the main barrier to innovation.
6. While the standard measurement of innovation is valid for CCSIs, new metrics are needed to make visible the wide variety of actors and impacts in the sector.

Following those findings and in order to support a better understanding about the CCIs ecosystem and recognise the added value and wider impact of the CCIs projects, the CONTRAST Open Conference on CCIs and Innovation held a session on “Sustainability and Social Inclusion” co-facilitated by The Basque Cluster for Culture and Creative Industries – KSIgune, and the Basque Innovation Agency – Innobasque. The session presented 5 case studies which have a collaborative community approach and which highly contribute to the increase of economic and cultural vitality in their regions through innovation practices: Cultural Space Agency (Washington), Aus Design (Tallinn), Hijinx (Cardiff), Museo Antioquia (Medellín) and Twispworks (Washington).

More information

The “CONTRAST II Study CCIs and Innovation: ecosystems, typologies, measurements and impacts” is available here.

The whole information about the CONTRAST project can be found here.