Now, more than ever, businesses are investing in the knowledge economy to catalyse innovation. The UK’s academic institutions are world leaders in creating knowledge and ideas. The Creative Industries Knowledge Transfer Network (CIKTN) invited Prospect to lead a strategic project exploring the future of creating, sharing and applying this wealth and better connecting academia and creative businesses.

Historically, the Creative Industries have not engaged with ‘knowledge transfer’ (KT) on the same scale as industries such as sciences and engineering, for example. Add to this a harsh economic climate and the increasing overlapping and competition between business and academia and you have a knotty problem; one that design is ideally suited to solve.

Prospect has the holistic philosophy to apply its design process and methodologies in a way that would engage a broad spectrum of people, and make sense of a diverse range of reactions, comments and ideas. Prospect advocates a collaborative, co-creative process to not only gather information and insights from these stakeholders, but also to encourage them to generate their own new solutions to possible developments in the future.

The project pivoted around the creation of four future scenarios, based on economic, social, cultural and environmental trends amongst other factors. These were designed to challenge and provoke participants and ask; ‘How would you thrive in this new world?’; ‘What do you fear?’; and ‘What needs to be done?’.

Online surveys, expert interviews, future scenarios and five workshops conducted around the UK informed the three reports delivered through the project. The Unlocking Knowledge Transfer Executive Summary is available via the CIKTN website.

The first, Baselines (PDF), documents today’s landscape of knowledge sharing between the UK’s creative industries and academia.

The second, Scenarios (PDF), illustrates possible futures and documents how our participants reacted to them.

The third, Opportunities (PDF), presents a series of robust recommendations for future services, spaces and initiatives, balancing a wealth of views with feasibility and sustainability, realised through a powerful strategic design process.

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