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. Thispaper adds to this work by looking at how the process of collaboration has fared between highereducation institutions (HEIs) and small, medium and micro-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the creativeand cultural industries (CCI). It does this by looking at the preliminary findings of CreativeworksLondon’s (CWL) Creative Voucher Scheme. The findings emerged from an analysis of applicationdata, ex post project final reports and interview data. The results to date show that: first, pastexperience in university – industry collaborations is tremendously beneficial to the success of thecollaboration ; second, the creative industries engages with a number of different actors that speakdifferent collaborative languages, actors are needed that are able to communicate at multiple levelsat once; third, the collaborative process is not simply a dualistic one between university and industrybut multi-layered involving a number of knowledge brokers in different positions in-between and atthe interstices of these organizational structures; fourth, administrative expediency with regards toimplementing these voucher schemes varies from university to university which point to potentiallylarge departmental differences that can affect the intended collaborations; and fifth, there needs tobe a managing of expectations and a balancing of different incentives when it comes to negotiatingthe outcome of these collaborations since university and industry move at different speeds andvalue different things