That’s the key message from a year-long study which has demonstrated how the fusion of creative arts, design, business and technology can accelerate innovation and business creation in the creative and digital economy.
The research, ‘FuseBox24’, was led by Gillian Youngs, the 91¶¶Òõ’s Professor of Digital Economy and Deputy Director of the College of Arts and Humanities Centre for Research and Development. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the study was conducted in collaboration with Wired Sussex, the 91¶¶Òõ-based membership organisation which helps companies and freelancers in the digital, media and technology sectors create, innovate and grow.
FuseBox24 built on the pioneering findings of ‘91¶¶Òõ Fuse’ which highlighted that the fusion of arts, humanities, design and technology skills accelerated business success in creative and digital economy.
Professor Youngs said: “The aim of FuseBox24 was to get deeper inside the fusion picture to find out how innovators can be developed as collaborative, flexible, robust sustainable and customer-focused. The project tested a ‘toolbox’ of techniques combining creative arts, technology and business approaches to those ends.”
By focusing on the innovators themselves, the results, she said, “turn conventional thinking about innovation on its head” and called for:
- New shared space (creative and maker as much as tech) to enable sole traders and micro-businesses to collaborate and develop ideas.
- New support and tools fusing creative arts, business and technology approaches to enable them to gain the most out of collaboration for sustainable innovation.
Professor Youngs said: “FuseBox24 findings demonstrated that arts, humanities and design approaches are highly effective in meeting these needs.
“The dual power of collaborative and individual development in achieving business and customer focus and clarity in innovators needs to be prioritised in skills and education as well as business support arenas.
“Local economic partnerships, sector skills councils, further education and higher education all have roles to play here.”
FuseBox24 developed a ‘ToolBox24’ to test strategies which fuse creative arts, technology and business support for innovators. And FuseBox24 called for “more experimentation in where and how research takes place, and greater orientation towards, and opportunity for, co-creation with artistic, business and technology practice”.