Innovation processes in creative industries: new practices and the use of technology in the digital entertainment industry

Abstract

In the last few decades Creative Industries (CIs) have been gaining ground as an important topic in academic and political agendas. CIs have their origin in creativity and individual talent to produce content, services or products with symbolic value, e.g. design, music, video games, among other sectors. The rationale in grouping these rather diverse activities together was said to be that individual creativity and intellectual capital were the primary drivers for these sectors. Moreover, digital technologies play an important role as they provide new forms of expressions of creativity (such as in music, movies or video games). In the academic literature, these activities have been widely studied as new industries in developed countries. Nevertheless, there is a gap with regards to studying their innovation processes. After conducting the literature review (second chapter), I argue that research on creative industries has analyzed innovation from different perspectives but in a separate way, without in-depth analysis of their innovation process. Furthermore, the role of new digital technologies in the innovation process has not been analyzed, which play a major role in these industries. In this regard, this doctoral thesis aims to contribute to the literature by exploring different topics of the innovation process in creative industries from the perspective of the use of new technologies (technological change) and the emergence of new practices (organizational change). The case of the mobile games sector (i.e. games to be played on portable devices) has been used as study context. In pursuit of the objective, it is proposed a compendium of four articles corresponding to the central chapters of this thesis. The first article (Chapter 2) is a literature review. In this paper, the existing innovation process literature in creative sectors is reviewed, and a theoretical model for the entire innovation process is proposed. In essence, it explains how

innovation occurs and what managerial practices are commonly used. Based on the proposal, an agenda for future research is presented. The research agenda leads us to focus on the second paper (Chapter 3) on the innovation process in a specific creative sector, mobile games, and new practices that have been introduced due to technological and market changes. Based on a qualitative approach of 14 case studies, the paper proposes a data-driven innovation process model. This model explains how mobile companies explore, develop and commercialize new products/services in an iterative way, and the role of technological and market changes on the emergence of this model. The Chapter 4 presents an exploratory study on how digital platforms, as internet technologies, have changed and introduced new innovation practices. Using qualitative data from 50 interviews with professional, the results show that digital platforms have introduced some practices such as a creation process in real time, and they have reorganized others, such as internal structures. This research aims to contribute to the literature by improving the knowledge on how technologies change managerial practices (in this case the innovation process) and organizations. The last paper (Chapter 5) presents an inductive study on how hackathons, as new innovation and collaborative practices, contribute to innovation in large organizations. Drawing on a single case of a large company from a creative sector (mobile games), and based on analytical interviews and non-participant observation, the results suggest that hackathons contribute by promoting exploration activities, and by enhancing some preconditions for innovation, such as attracting talent. This paper aims to contribute to the existing research on new innovation practices by positioning the results in innovation literature. Finally, the conclusions section (Chapter 6) reflects on the results obtained and it presents some future research lines to continue developing the creative industry and innovation process literature.