Organizational preconditions for innovation: Examining innovation networks in the creative industry

Purpose and goal

Organizing processes in both The Lodge and Umeå Creative Association were initially built on good relations, an awareness over which competencies there existed in the network, and how to get access to these competencies. However, as the market grew increasingly disruptive and the demands for competencies grew increasingly diversified, organizing processes that were initially in the shape and form of a production network changed to include international links for the engines in the networks: North Kingdom and Dohi Sweden. This in turn led to new challenges and opportunities.

Results and expected effects

Even if the two innovation networks were different in character both networks struggled in finding a balance between collaboration and competition between the network actors. Both networks also struggled with finding and holding on to competent staff. Related to academic results from the project we have noted how extant research has failed to address heterogeneous innovation networks like these, and our first paper based on the project makes such a contribution.

Approach and implementation

In order to answer the research question we organized the project by conducting interviews wth representatives från the two innovation networks. We have conducted 7 interviews with representatives from The Lodge and 9 interviews with representatives from Umeå Creative Alliance. We have also arranged two workshops with representatives from the two innovation networks and from Region Västerbotten.