Mechanisms of collaboration between creative small, medium and micro-sized enterprises and higher education institutions: reflections on the Creativeworks London Creative Voucher scheme

Abstract

According to the literature, university-industry collaborations are far from straightforward. This paper adds to this work by looking at how the process of collaboration has fared between higher education institutions (HEIs) and small, medium and micro-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the creative and cultural industries (CCI). It does this by looking at the preliminary findings of Creativeworks London’s (CWL) Creative Voucher Scheme. The findings emerged from an analysis of application data, ex post project final reports and interview data. The results to date show that: first, past experience in university – industry collaborations is tremendously beneficial to the success of the collaboration ; second, the creative industries engages with a number of different actors that speak different collaborative languages, actors are needed that are able to communicate at multiple levels at once; third, the collaborative process is not simply a dualistic one between university and industry but multi-layered involving a number of knowledge brokers in different positions in-between and at the interstices of these organizational structures; fourth, administrative expediency with regards to implementing these voucher schemes varies from university to university which point to potentially large departmental differences that can affect the intended collaborations; and fifth, there needs to be a managing of expectations and a balancing of different incentives when it comes to negotiating the outcome of these collaborations since university and industry move at different speeds and value different things.