Creative Spill-Over Tools Good Practice Paper Author: Creative SpIN Lead Expert Philippe Kern

 

 

Paper prepared as part of the URBACT project Creative SpIN which aims at identifying the best tools and methods to stimulate creative spillovers.

 

 

Table of Contents

 

 

1.     CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVES. 3

2.     MULTIDISCIPLINARY SPACES. 4

2.1.       Introduction. 4

2.2.       Good Practices. 5

2.2.1.         A flexible space to trigger accidental interactions with arts - Budafabriek. 5

2.2.2.         An open university campus to foster creative manufacturing – RDM campus. 6

2.2.3.         A media art lab to prototype arts&science projects and services – Ars Electronica Futurelab  6

3.     THE “DISRUPTIVE CONNECTORS” 7

3.1.       Introduction. 7

3.2.       Good Practices. 8

3.2.1.         A cultural professional to regenerate the Port of Rotterdam.. 8

3.2.2.         An artistic interventions’ specialist to build business innovation capacity in a urban setting  8

3.2.3.         Academics fostering lateral thinking and projects across disciplines – Hybrid Plattform   9

4.     INNOVATION VOUCHERS. 10

4.1.       Introduction. 10

4.2.       Good Practices. 10

4.2.1.         Four Creative Challenge Celtic Crescent North West (4CNW) 10

4.2.2.         Vouchers in Creative Industries (VINCI) 11

4.2.3.         Design Transfer Bonus. 12

5.     CONCLUDING REMARKS. 13

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVES

 

In the knowledge economy, innovation is not associated with isolated industry, incubators, business parks or research labs. It is not confined to specialists with unique ability or skills. It is promoted through  a network of connectivity, collaboration, knowledge exchange, learning and spill-over benefits that are made possible between different kinds of people, companies and organisations, both from the private and the public sector.

 

Rather than companies taking centre stage, urban environments with lively neighborhoods are increasingly at the heart of innovation strategies.

 

 

Culture has a key role to play in innovation strategies. Reliance on aesthetic, design, entertainment and metaphors highlights the importance of skills offered by artists, cultural organisations, and creative professionals. The latter group helps businesses to differentiate themselves whether in product innovation, branding, or communication. This form of non-technical innovation is a feature of post-industrial economies.

 

Cities own abundant cultural resources that are ready to be mined by artists and creative professionals as well as by companies in other sectors. However, without strong interactions across sectors and disciplines there cannot be (culture-led) creativity and innovation.

 

More and more cities are thus experimenting tools, methods, processes and policies to help them unleash the spillover potential of culture and the creative industries (CCIs) into traditional industrial sectors[1]. Incubators, creative hubs, multidisciplinary working spaces, innovation vouchers or artistic interventions, to name just a few, are some of the examples of tools put in place with a view to facilitate knowledge flows, experimentation and cross-disciplinary innovation.

 

The purpose of this paper is to present some examples of “spillover tools” that have been experimented in the last few years, through a number of good practices.

 

Although the objective of the illustrated tools is to generate creative spillover, we can more particularly distinguish between:

 

• Multidisciplinary spaces to attract creative talents, change mindsets and foster unforeseen interactions between PEOPLE;
• Disruptive Connectors to bring new visions and working PROCESSES in specific contexts, sectors or settings;
• Innovation Vouchers to incentivise cross-sectoral PROJECTS with the use of public funding.

 

The selected tools are therefore likely to have an impact on the three focus areas of the Creative SpIN projects, namely PEOPLE (by attracting creative talents and changing mindsets), PROCESSES (by triggering new ways of working and collaborating) and PROJECTS (by incentivizing innovative collaboration and unexpected developments).

 

The Good practices come from Creative SpIN partners as well as from other cities in Europe, including examples from smaller cities (Kortrijk, Ale – less than 100.000 inhabitants) to show that city size does not limit the capacity to encourage and experiment culture-led innovation in urban spaces.

 

The selected practices aim to give some examples of how cities are facing the spillover challenge in practice and which tools/solutions they are testing.

 

A more comprehensive document (Smart Guide for Creative Spillovers) will be delivered next spring as the last deliverable of the Creative SpIN project. The objective will be to help cities identify their assets (cultural, educational, technological, etc.) as well as the right tools, processes and policies and help them set up a spillover strategy.

 

 

2.MULTIDISCIPLINARY SPACES

2.1.Introduction

Today, innovation rarely happens in closed laboratories. Instead, it is interdisciplinary collaboration that holds the promise of successful inventions. Against this background, different kinds of physical facilities now provide spaces to exchange information, knowledge and ideas across disciplines. Hubs, incubators, labs and co-working spaces, to name just a few, are increasingly set up to support open innovation processes through the diverse potentialities of experiments transcending an individual sector.

Multidisciplinary spaces in this instance are intended as (possible) tools of urban policy to attract creative PEOPLE and foster unforeseen interactions across different disciplines (science, technology, engineering as well as design, arts, culture and media) as driving forces of economic development and innovation.

These spaces are often situated in historical centres or old industrial areas. Therefore, in addition to contributing to experiment new innovation processes, they often contribute to giving a new function to former industrial or cultural heritage buildings, bringing new life to abandoned quarters and improving their image.

 

To better understand how these spaces are set up and how they work, three good practices are presented below. Of course, the selected good practices are not intended to be exhaustive in relation to the possible typologies of existing spaces. They rather relate to three different kinds of spaces that we have come across during the Creative SpIN project. They show how cities in Europe are approaching, each in their own manner, the need of setting up multidisciplinary working areas in their urban environments. They thus represent diverse ways of reaching the same objective (stimulate cross-sectoral innovation) that can inspire cities wishing to work out their own model of multidisciplinary space in different ways.

 

 

 

 

2.2.Good Practice Exemplars

 

1. A flexible space to trigger accidental interactions with arts - Budafabriek

 

Budafabriek (Kortrijk, Belgium) was created in 2012 by the municipality of Kortrijk (75.200 inhabitants) as part of the urban regeneration plan of Buda Island, a former industrial area very close to the city centre. Since the 90s, Buda Island was the object of a major regeneration process aimed at bringing citizens and companies back to this part of the city.

Arts and culture were included as major “ingredients” of this urban plan. One of the major projects was indeed the creation of the Artcentre BUDA[2] which gathered the five most important local cultural organisations. Today, the centre offers a variety of cultural activities both to professionals (ie. artistic residencies) and the general public.

Budafabriek, which got substantial support from the city and EU funding[3], was created with the specific objective of making arts and creativity part of economic innovation processes. Budafabriek is hosted in an old textile factory, converted into a creative place to interlink designers, artists, students and businessmen in order to enhance cross-pollination for innovative concepts, products and applications. The idea is to provide the community with a flexible space that can host different kinds of activities (exhibitions, project development, meetings, conferences, etc.) that can facilitate the interactions between people from different backgrounds.

Buda Fabriek also hosts a Fab Lab (BUDA::lab), a public workplace and a meeting point where companies, individuals, students, schools, designers can meet, work and be inspired by people there working in different sectors and disciplines.

Companies in search of creative skills or disruptive ideas for their business can find inspiration at Budafabriek: some companies have for instance teamed up with artists met at Budafabriek to develop new products – e.g. sound-based curtains – or explore new uses of existing technologies stimulated by challenging requests from artists). Another spillover project involved an artist and a spinoff of the University of Leuven working on medical technologies. The artist asked for headphones able to capture the movements of the brain and transform them into music. The technology developed under the request of the artist enabled the company to discover a new tool that was then used for medical purposes.

Budafabriek has also become a reference point for people looking for innovative projects such as the “Green Light District”, a 3 month-long programme currently going on with expos, lectures, workshops and labs exploring the relation between humans and nature/sustainability issues.

The Director of Budafabriek (Franky Devos – the local “Disruptive Connector” – see next pages) has a key role in setting up stimulating and attractive activities both for artists and creative professionals, innovative companies and citizens. However, apart from the permanent activities of the Fab Lab, at the moment the possibility of triggering cross-sectoral interaction is mainly left to the willingness of Budafabriek’s partners (the city, Designregio, Howest College, etc.). The city is now thinking about setting up a new management structure that specifically deals with the stimulation of spillovers in a more systematic way.

 

 

1. An open university campus to foster creative manufacturing – RDM campus

 

 

The RDM campus[4] is gathering large and small companies immersed in an open environment, hosting students from the technical, architecture and engineering schools in Rotterdam (Rotterdam University of Applied Science and Albeda College - vocational education institution). Since 2002, the Port authorities have invested € 125 million in renovating the ancient docks now hosting this campus.

 

RDM is a place for experimentation and multidisciplinary interactions. It has become a meeting place where improbable encounters between researchers, students and entrepreneurs are bound to happen. These connections are triggering new collaborations and ideas.

 

The ambition is to stimulate creative manufacturing by establishing a “makerspace”. Technical equipment and expertise from the school is shared with entrepreneurs, innovators and startups, going from a 3D printer machine (available for renting), a cycle manufacturer, a landscape architect to a wind turbine assembler.

 

The Campus now includes three spaces: the Innovation Dock (working space for innovative firms and students); the Dry Dock (the former head office of RDM Campus how housing a congress centre, offices, educational facilities and studios), and the Dock Port (a jetty for the fast ferry Aqualiner connecting the campus to the city centre).

 

The DNAMO incubator is located within the Innovation Dock. Mutual collaboration is encouraged both by the large size and the openness of this space – working people are separated by glass walls or no walls at all. DNAMO’s mission is to empower tomorrow’s innovative firms by making them more sustainable. Its major focus is on high-tech rather than creative businesses. Nevertheless, its high-tech incubatees can be considered creative taking into account their emphasis on design as a process to face sustainability issues.

 

Creative industries also inspire the overall design of the RDM campus: the organization of the campus - very decentralized, organised in small units and promoting a collaborative approach - is very similar to the way creative industries work. Traditional production systems, centred on cost control and on-time delivery in mechanized processes are no longer the main focus, but rather empowerment and interactions across disciplines, skills, experiences and ages to stimulate creative manufacturing is.

 

1. A media art lab to prototype arts & science projects and services – Ars Electronica Futurelab

Since 1979, Ars Electronica[5] (Linz, Austria) acts as a creative platform seeking out and promoting spillover effects between art, technology and society. Ars Electronica has importantly contributed to give a new dynamic and image to Linz, a medium-sized city of 193.000 inhabitants which has traditionally relied on its (still competitive) steel industry. 

 

Launchedas a festival, Ars Electronica soon evolved to become a truly innovative and experimentation-led laboratory. It now counts four divisions which inspire one another:

 

• Ars Electronica Festival, held annually since 1986;
• Prix Ars Electronica, awarded since 1987 to the most creative and innovative ideas that make use of digital media;
• Ars Electronica Center, established in 1996, which combines all artistic, scientific and technological areas, challenging visitors to discover new approaches to humankind, human life today and its future prospects.
• Futurelab, also established in 1996, which is a prototype media art lab where transdisciplinary work is carried out.

 

Ars Electronica Futurelab is an R&D laboratory which focuses on future innovation stemming from new interactions between art, technology and society. The lab’s team is committed to transdisciplinary research and works across various disciplines (media art, architecture, design, virtual reality and real-time graphics). The lab hosts artists and researchers from all over the globe (they can take residence there) which is a considered a fundamental element to nurture interdisciplinary work.

The Futurelab’s work consists of a number of different projects, products, services going from art works, to digital installations to media products. Contracted research at the Ars Electronica Futurelab often also results in new patents developed together with its industry partner Siemens.

 

Ars Electronica and its four divisions are managed by Ars Electronica Linz GmbH, an enterprise specifically created by the city of Linz in 1995.

 

Table 1 - Multidisciplinary spaces: summary table

 

Budafabriek	A place to interlink designers, artists, students and businessmen in order to enhance cross-pollination for innovative concepts, products and applications, hosted in an old textile factory. The space is open to flexible usage (no permanent companies or activities there) proposed by its partners (the city, Designregion, etc.).
RDM Campus	An open university campus for experimentation and multidisciplinary interactions, where improbable meetings are bound to happen. It hosts students from the technical, architecture and engineering schools in Rotterdam (University of Applied Science and vocational education institutions).
Ars Electronica Futurelab	An R&D laboratory which focuses on future innovation stemming from new interactions between art, technology and society. The lab’s team is committed to transdisciplinary research and works across various disciplines, resulting in innovative art works, digital installations, media products and also patents.

 

 

 

 

3.THE “DISRUPTIVE CONNECTORS”

 

3.1.Introduction

 

“Disruptive Connectors” are intermediaries, brokers between creative people and professionals from other disciplines, not necessarily related to CCIs. They are the “disruptors” of the established thinking order and the connectors between sectors that do not usually meet or evolve together.

Disruptive Connectors are people able to work across disciplines with an open mind, people that bring their knowledge of a sector (often culture) into another area.

Disruptive Connectors can be civil servants, social workers, entrepreneurs, associations, large or small companies, universities, artists, designers or politicians. From an employment perspective, they may be project managers, assisting the transformation of urban areas, the emergence of multidisciplinary spaces or the development of new business activities and services, or of innovation capacity. Importantly, Disruptive Connectors can also be found in cities’ administration.

Their function is to trigger new PROCESSES that facilitate fruitful interactions between disciplines, departments or people thus enabling innovation both economically and socially. Disruptive Connectors play a key role in the process as they instill new ideas in organisations and provoke a disruptive influence on traditional and routine thinking.

Disruptive Connectors are also gatekeepers, the ones that are able to identify the “popping up innovation” and making it known to investors, professionals or the public. They are the “critics” of innovation like the critics of cultural events. They will intermediate between the new and the existing. They will select in the same way as a film producer will select a script for development and an art gallery will promote a visual artist. They will organise the “buzz” amongst the opinion makers, the stars, and the people whose opinion counts and who have influence.

Three examples of Disruptive Connectors are provided below.

 

3.2.Good Practice

 

1. A cultural professional to regenerate the Port of Rotterdam

A good example of a Disruptive connector is given by Maartje Berendsen working for the Port of Rotterdam as Strategic Advisor for Art Projects. She is in charge of developing an “innovation dock”[6] in an abandoned shipyard. The Port authority has decided to move away from its traditional activities and to contribute to the city’s attractiveness. It hired a Disruptive Connector from the culture sector to disrupt the traditional vision of port management.

 

Maartje Berendsen has a background in cultural event organization. Her position within the Port of Rotterdam enables her to bring disruptive thinking into the planning of the site’s development which was previously devoted to heavy industry activities. With the support of the port authorities, she is able to propose innovative ways to reconquer the space and ultimately recover its lost value.

 

Since 2009, the former submarine wharf is used for cultural programming (concerts, exhibitions and cultural events) to regenerate the area.

 

 

1. An artistic interventions’ specialist to build business innovation capacity in an urban setting

Pia Areblad is another example of a Disruptive Connector in her new role as Enterprise Manager for the Ale municipality, a city of 28.000 inhabitants on the outskirts of Goteborg (Sweden). Since August 2014, she has been given the mission of turning the municipality into a test bed for activities on transforming private and public organisations with the arts to develop innovation capacity in the area. An overall budget of € 280.000 has been allocated to this mission for 2015.

Ms. Arebald, who has a renowned expertise in how to produce artistic interventions (AI) in organisations for innovation, was hired by the municipality with the consensus of the local Corporate Advisory Board, a body composed of CEOs of local companies that helps the city make the business climate in Ale more attractive.

The new Enterprise Manager for Ale has just set up a Work Plan to help the city reach three strategic goals: 1) find ways to help companies to be more innovative and competitive, 2) attract more companies to the city; and 3) encourage more people start new companies. The involvement of creative professionals to build innovation capacity (strategic goal 1) is part of the approved Work Plan for the coming months.

 

1. Academics fostering lateral thinking and projects across disciplines – Hybrid Plattform

Disruptive Connectors can be also found in universities.

At the beginning of 2010, the idea of creating a Hybrid Plattform[7] took shape as a project attached to the Technische Universität (TU) Berlin and Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) with two professors at its helm: Barbara Stark, Head of Department Research, TU Berlin, and Christoph Gengnagel, Chair of Structural Design and Technology and Director of the Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning, UdK Berlin.

Hybrid Plattform was therefore created as a university-led association network to support transdisciplinary projects in research and education in the heart of the university campus[8]. Funding has been provided by the ERDF, as part of the “Project Zukunft”^[9].

 

The Hybrid office offers different services aimed at matching and connecting scientists, scholars, artists, and students. It supports projects in accessing appropriate funding. It offers a co-working and event space. It also raises awareness amongst companies and other institutions on the innovation potential of thinking across boundaries by providing lectures and talks on the potential of art, science, humanities, technology, and design.

 

Developed projects go from the development of exhibitions on scientific topics to the development of games for elderly people[10].

Table 2 - Disruptive Connectors - Summary Table

Maartje Berendsen, Strategic Advisor for Art Projects – Port of Rotterdam	She is in charge of developing an “innovation dock” in an abandoned shipyard.  Since 2009, the former submarine wharf is used for concerts, exhibitions and cultural events to regenerate the area.
Pia Areblad, Enterprise Manager - Ale municipality	Ms. Arebald, who has a renowned expertise in how to produce artistic interventions in organisations for innovation, was hired by the municipality of Ale to develop innovation capacity in the area through the arts.
Professors Barbara Stark and Christoph Gengnagel, ideators – Hybrid Plattform	They are the minds behind the conception of the content of the Hybrid Plattform, a university-led association network and transdisciplinary project lab for lateral thinkers and boundary pushers, connecting scientists, scholars, artists, and students.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4.INNOVATION VOUCHERS

 

4.1.Introduction

Spaces and Disruptive Connectors are not always sufficient to foster business cooperation. Often, cultural barriers or simply lack of knowledge about external expertise can prevent companies from collaborating with creative professionals.

 

Innovation vouchers are a hands-off tool designed to incentivise organisations to embrace new ways of thinking and doing. They consist of (usually) small grants (from a few thousands to 15.000 euros) provided to companies from any economic sector to access creative services (design, advertising, etc.) for specific needs and innovation purposes that can take the form of new products, services or PROJECTS.

 

Three pilot actions for better business support under the European Creative Industries Alliance (ECIA)[11] are centred on innovation vouchers. The total cost of each of the three actions amounts on average to around € 350.000, with an EU contribution of around € 225.000. They started in December 2011 and ended in November 2013.

 

In the next pages, we will present three good practices: two from ECIA (selected amongst those for which more evidence of results is available) and another one from Berlin.

 

4.2.Good Practice

4.2.1.Four Creative Challenge Celtic Crescent North West (4CNW)

 

Led by the Sligo County Council (Ireland), the aim of the Creative Challenge Celtic Crescent North West programme (4CNW)[12] was to demonstrate how public authorities could increase business innovation take-up through a tool linking creative micro-enterprises with businesses in the wider economy. The scheme was opened to traditional industries in Ireland to help them access services from creative industries in Scotland and Scandinavia.

 

The programme was implemented as part of an overall policy framework – The Creative Sligo Strategy & Action Plan 2010-2012 - aimed at promoting integrated actions to support culture and creativity. The existence of a strategy is considered as a key element to create an innovation ecosystem without which the voucher scheme would have probably not worked. According to the programme managers, vouchers are simply tools that can work only if they are integrated in an overall strategy contributing to build innovation capacity and raise awareness about the innovative potential of creative services.   

 

4CNW targeted companies from four high growth industry sectors: life sciences, tourism, technology and agrifood, building on the fact that 8 out of 10 of the world’s leaders in these sectors are based in Ireland.

 

It combined two solutions:

 

• Allocation of Talent Vouchers of € 5.000 to companies and allow them to employ a creative professional to work with them;
• Creation of a “Creative Directory” – which currently counts 190 accredited creative suppliers.

 

The implementation of the voucher scheme followed the following operational cycle: Scheme Promotion, Supplier Qualification, Project Selection, Matchmaking, Project Collaboration, Evaluation and Dissemination.

 

The programme attracted 146 applications from Talent Voucher beneficiaries and 336 from creative suppliers. Developed projects go from the development of innovative ways to promote IWA Knock Airport’s tourism routes through the help of the arts to the development of creative communication or online digital strategies[13].  

 

According to the results of survey carried out amongst the beneficiaries of the programme:

 

• 84.6% of businesses would hire other Creative Services as a result of participation to 4CNW;
• 58.3% of businesses feel that the productivity of their business has increased as a result of participation in this programme;
• 75% believe their participation helped raise awareness of their business and distinguish their services from other competitors.

 

In terms of learning points, the matchmaking sessions resulted to be key in the process: they helped building mutual understanding and facilitated the matching of companies with the right creative service providers. It was also found that the programme contributed to build innovation capacity in both the traditional sectors and creative companies, but that even more capacity building is needed to continue fostering this kind of cross-sectoral business collaboration. 4CNW also demonstrated that enterprise and development agencies have a pivotal role to play in promoting and advocating the importance of creative knowledge for business. 

 

4.2.2.Vouchers in Creative Industries (VINCI)

 

VINCI – Vouchers in Creative Industries[14] has been implemented by Austria Wirtschaftsservice GmbH, the development bank of the Austrian federal government.

 

The objective of the scheme was to enhance cooperation between the traditional industry and creative service suppliers from different sectors, namely: design, architecture, multimedia/games, fashion, music industry, audio-visual and film production, the media and publishing sectors, graphics, the advertising sector and the art market.

 

The scheme was first tested in the Salzburg region in 2012. A total of 71 applications were submitted out of which a jury of experts has chosen the 20 most innovative projects, which have been awarded with up to € 5.000 each. The maximum amount was fixed at € 5.000 because other schemes tested in Austria with lower amounts proved to be not sufficiently effective.

 

As a follow up to this first pilot, In February 2014 the creative voucher programme was extended at the national level by the Austrian Ministry of Economy, Family and Youth. At first, 300 vouchers were provided. Due to the high demand and the enormous interest, the budget was doubled in order to fund up to 600 vouchers. At the beginning of March, the submitting-tool was closed because of the high number of applications.

 

Various kinds of projects were supported, for instance to enable cooperation between designers and manufacturing companies and create new products or improve the existing ones, to develop sound branding for a high-tech product, or to develop a new material combination of weaved fabric and crystal and subsequently introduce a seating furniture collection made with this material[15].

 

The very high request of creative expertise importantly exceeded all expectation. For the programme manager, this is a great sign of the need of creative industrial services by traditional companies. Ideally, the scheme could become permanent due to the success of the pilot phase, but this is not confirmed yet.

 

 

4.2.3.Design Transfer Bonus

 

Set up by the Berlin’s Senate Department for Economics, Technology and Research with the support of ERDF funding, Design Transfer Bonus[16] is a pilot programme aimed at helping SMEs to innovate their businesses through design know-how. The programme connects companies from technological sectors, e.g. manufacturing, engineering, transport or logistics, with design companies, agencies or universities. The new funding call for 2014-2015 has now been approved and made public.

 

SMEs can apply with a specific project proposal. Design Transfer Bonus provides approved projects with funding up to 70% of the total cost of the project, for a maximum amount of € 15.000. The scheme is funding external design works as well as design consultancy, project and design management for new or improved products, services and processes. SMEs are given the opportunity to engage early on in the production process with design experts.

Differently from other voucher schemes, Design Transfer Bonus tries to connect not only SMEs and designers but also creative sub-sectors within CCIs.

The projects approved mainly focus on web applications and user interface designs. Product designs are the second important group. For instance, design know-how has been used by the company Limmer Laser GmbH to optimize the user interface of a medical laser. A new design interface has also been created for the app of a graphic library by the company TouchingCode GmbH in cooperation with a designer.

 

Business-to-business cooperation seems to be more successful at this stage than cooperation between businesses and higher education institutions, which occur less often at this stage of the pilot.

 

For the responsible of the programme, the main challenges concern the “silo-thinking”, the circulation of the offer of creative competences and skills through different channels as well as the creation opportunities were companies from different sectors can actually meet and connect.

Design Transfer Bonus addresses these challenges by making creative competences more widely accessible and by promoting knowledge transfer between designers and technological SMEs leading to concrete innovative projects.

 

Table 3 - Innovation vouchers - Summary Table

4CNW	Led by the Sligo County (Ireland), 4CNW targeted companies from four high growth industry sectors (life sciences, tourism, technology and agrifood) to connect with creative companies in Scotland and Sweden. It provided traditional companies with a voucher of € 5.000 to access creative services. The programme attracted 146 applications from Talent Voucher beneficiaries and 336 from creative suppliers. It particularly contributed to innovation capacity in traditional as well as creative companies.
VINCI	Initially tested in the Salzburg region (Austria), the VINCI programme was extended at the national level. A total of 600 vouchers for awarded by the national programme. Vouchers amounted to up to € 5.000 each.
Design Transfer Bonus	Set up by the Berlin’s Senate Department for Economics, Technology and Research (Germany), Design Transfer Bonus is a pilot programme aimed at helping SMEs to innovate their businesses through design know-how. The programme covers 70% of the total cost of the proposed project, for a maximum amount of € 15.000.

 

 

 

5.CONCLUDING REMARKS

 

Innovation is happening more and more in cities. Municipalities are increasingly testing ways to make their urban spaces a suitable place for innovation to happen.

 

However, there is no innovation without creativity. And there is no creativity without challenging what already exists. This is what artists and creative professionals are good at: criticizing conventions, proposing new visions and meanings, and re-formulating problems from new perspectives.

 

A city cannot function as an innovation environment without taking into consideration social and connectivity aspects generating a change in the traditional mindset and encouraging improbable connections.

 

Several “connection” tools are being experimented to facilitate creative spillovers that could ultimately contribute to a change in culture, approach to innovation and working methods. Three types have been presented in this paper: multidisciplinary spaces, disruptive connectors and innovation vouchers. Importantly, European funding has often been used to support such tools.

 

Due to their recent set up, there are not many recorded examples of success, but there are certainly signals of success that can be identified:

 

• Budafabriek is attracting the attention of local companies as a place where “innovative things” happen. Its management structure is going to be changed to foster spillovers in its spaces on a more regular basis;
• The RDM Campus has attracted companies in its incubator space thanks to its distinctive flexible and open physical spaces encouraging collaboration;
• “Disruptive Connectors” are increasingly called upon to occupy important positions within local bodies and organisations and introduce new visions and capacities;
• Innovation vouchers have been quite broadly experimented now in Europe providing positive signals about their capacity to create new connections, improve innovation capacity and improve mutual understanding between CCIs and other sectors of the economy.

 

Spillover, however, remains a very much new policy area. Important challenges remain to be addressed by policy makers: first, there is a need to better understand the specific potential and effects of these different tools and develop appropriate indicators and methodologies to measure impacts. Second, single tools cannot be effective, alone, at stimulating spillovers. There is a need to develop tools as part of comprehensive strategies that fully recognize and promote the CCIs’ innovative potential. Third, whilst at the moment spillovers mainly happen on an occasional basis, ways to systematize creative spillovers and make CCIs consistently part of innovation processes should be explored (most innovation voucher schemes, for instance, are temporary pilot projects and collaborations do not necessarily continue after the end of the programme).

 

 

 

 

 

 

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