Emergence of Cross-innovation Systems

This chapter presents the many premises of this book. It first discusses the book’s central questions and lays out the design of the large multi-national and multi-method study, carried out across Northern Europe. It also places the book at the interdisciplinary space between contemporary innovation economics and cultural and social theory. It then discusses the complex set of social processes that have conditioned the phenomena that the book studies – how and why are the contemporary audiovisual media industries co-innovating and converging with other sectors including education, tourism and health care? Within this framework, it discusses the effects of the broader individualisation and mediatisation processes, of media convergence, of the emergence of cross-media or transmedia strategies, of the evolution of the service and experience economies and of the emergence of creative industries policy frameworks.

This chapter establishes the conceptual and analytic framework for the book. It relates not only to much of the existing work in evolutionary and institutional economics, but also to work in cultural science and cultural semiotics domains as well as in media convergence and transmedia studies. The central concept it first deploys is ‘innovation systems’ as applied in national, regional, international and sectoral contexts. It then builds on the general theory of economic evolution by Kurt Dopfer and Jason Potts and reviews the tools this theory provides to carry out a meso-level analysis of industries co-innovating and converging. It then proposes a new concept – ‘cross-innovation’ – to refer to the emergence of new structures and ‘rules’ at the boundaries of existing industries.

The chapter discusses the characteristics of audiovisual (AV) media sectors in the Baltic Sea region. Therein it focuses on the specifics of media industries in small countries in the region as they are challenged in ways notably different from large countries with large domestic markets for media content. It discusses the differences between the AV media industries in the Nordic and Baltic countries and suggests that while in the first case long-term welfare society policies and conscious policy-driven system building have conditioned growth and international success then also in the second case innovation policy rationales have facilitated recent growth and dynamics. It then discusses the specific challenges, especially platformisation to small media industries in contemporary globalising media markets, and suggests that opportunities to resist these challenges may be in local inter-sectoral cooperation, that is, in building cross-innovation systems.

This chapter introduces the topic of cooperation and co-innovation between the audiovisual media and education sectors. It first discusses the emergence of educational film approximately a hundred years go – together with a new institutional framework, industry media, rulebooks, etc. It then discusses the ways public service media have addressed educational programming over the decades, including developing complex cross-media strategies and educational content databases more recently. The second half of the chapter is dedicated to the emergence of educational digital games, with their own institutional setups, production cultures, and training programmes. The chapter points, however, to a relative lack of cooperation between commercial game producers and educational institutions to date.

This chapter is based on the findings of the empirical material gathered in Finland and Sweden through interviews with education and audiovisual (AV) media actors and policymakers in 2017–2018. The aim of the chapter is to discuss the innovation systems of the education sector and Finland and Sweden in general, compare the sectoral innovation models of the two sectors, and conclude with discussing the resulting challenges for policymakers. Our results show that a new EdTech sector employing the competences of the education, information and communication technology, and AV media sectors has begun to emerge and actors in the both countries have eagerly taken actions to boost its development as a business and export field. We discuss the reasons and consequences of this development.

This chapter examines the micro-level dynamics of cross-innovation involving audiovisual and educational expertise through the prism of two cases: an augmented reality-based chemistry learning app developed in Estonia and a 360-degree short film project aimed at documenting and raising awareness about historical buildings in Lithuania. Based on the two cases, the chapter outlines several trends: the broadening of the notion of education beyond institutional education; the growing interest in public–private partnerships; and the emergence of heterogeneous networks feeding into the larger epistemic community of educational innovators. It also highlights a number of challenges that members of this community may face, including institutional resistance to change, schools’ lack of resources, teachers’ and administrators’ reluctance to use new technology and emerging technologies’ lack of maturity.

The chapter concludes the section on cross-innovation and convergence processes between audiovisual media industries and the education sector. It addresses, first, that these processes are not driven by any specific technology, but by two broad and interdependent processes – individualisation that makes people in insecure careers search for personalised learning opportunities and the experience economy that produces expectations for learning experiences to be pleasurable and fun, that is, gamified. The chapter demonstrates the emergence of EdTech as a new dialogic subsector operating between the publicly operating education sector and the private media and information and communication technology industries. It demonstrates the inherent institutional diversity in and around this subsector and discusses the nature of the dialogues constituting it. It, lastly, addresses the risks deriving from global platformisation to the education sector and demonstrates how Estonia’s government-run platforms, effectively cross-innovation systems linking teachers, learners and content providers in dynamic ways, could present feasible alternatives to the global platforms.

This chapter addresses the forms of co-innovation between the audiovisual (AV) industries and the health care sector. It gives a brief overview of how media have been used in health promotion, medical training and treatment by drawing on selected examples from television, entertainment and video game industries. Informed by an array of case-studies, this literature review suggests that the emergence of the new digital audiovisual media and online technologies bears a great potential to improve health care services in multiple ways, while it also recognises the risks associated with the crumbling of medical authority in thoroughly mediatised worlds. Therefore, it maintains that a successful adoption of entertainment-oriented media formats in health care always requires a close relationship with professional medical expertise.

In times of converging and diversifying audiovisual (AV) industries, digitising health sector and the increasing phenomenon of cross-sectoral innovation, the question arises about the state of affairs between the health and AV sectors. The chapter aims to explore what the main modes of cross-sectoral cooperation between the health and AV sectors are and what supports and hinders the emergence of a related cross-innovation system. The chapter introduces two case studies carried out in Estonia and the wider Aarhus region (Midtjylland) in Denmark. At each site representatives of the main stakeholders of both sectors were interviewed – policy makers, entrepreneurs, educators and professionals. The results demonstrate the crucial role of path-dependencies – in terms of both hindering and enabling cross-sectoral dialogues – and also the importance of effective coordination in supporting cross-innovation.

This chapter focuses on the micro-contexts of cross-innovation between digital audiovisual media and the health care sector by examining two cases, both start-ups working on virtual reality-assisted rehabilitation solutions. Through a discussion of the two cases, this chapter aims to elucidate the broader dynamics of digital health care as experienced by innovators seeking to contribute to it. It addresses the challenges faced by innovators, including the lengthy and costly nature of medical licensing, the inflexibility and fragmentation of pertinent regulations, and health care institutions’ and insurers’ resistance to change. It also highlights the importance of networking and the emergence of digital health care as a distinct and increasingly visible epistemic community, while touching upon the tensions between the public and the private sectors as a target market for innovators.

This chapter concludes the section on cross-innovation practices between audiovisual (AV) media industries and the health care sector. It suggests that the main case studies discussed in this section – Estonia in general and Aarhus Region in Denmark – tell of two different trajectories on how the emergence of cross-innovation systems can be facilitated by policies. Local policymakers in Aarhus have worked systematically to raise awareness and facilitate contacts between AV media and other sectors and this has resulted in an active start-up scene at the intersection between the media and the health care industries. Estonia, which is focusing on traditional cultural policymaking, has not recognised similar dynamics. Yet, Estonia may be still better prepared for the (global) platformisation of e-health services with its national e-governance systems, while Denmark’s health-related e-services remain fragmented and ripe for platformisation by multinationals, potentially undermining local cross-innovation systems.

This chapter discusses the various ways in which audiovisual (AV) media industries have cooperated with the tourism industry and explores the emergent areas for cross-innovation. It demonstrates the gradual mediatisation of tourism, but also how the added value from location tourism has started to affect, for instance, the operation of the film industry. It then discusses the emergence of tourism gamification that came about with the arrival of smartphones equipped with an ever-increasing variety of sensors relevant to location and mobility awareness. The chapter finishes by discussing the affordances and forms of augmented reality being used in the service of the cultural heritage sector and the broader tourism sector.

This chapter focuses on clarifying the cooperation and convergence between tourism and audiovisual (AV) sectors in Hamburg and Riga. In light of increasingly easier and more accessible travel, the tourism sector is a growing trend in most countries and regions. To what extent does this affect cooperation with the AV sector? The chapter gives an overview of different types of cooperation in these regions and brings out the main obstacles for innovation. When describing the innovation systems, focus is put on institutional frameworks in these two regions. We end by arguing that raising the demand for innovation in the tourism sector is a real challenge and demonstrating that the public sector plays an important role in driving the cross-innovation processes between the observed sectors.

The chapter takes a micro-level view to investigate cross-innovation between the audiovisual media and tourism sectors. It provides a narrativised account of the creation and development of two location-based film tourism apps, one developed in Hamburg, Germany and another in Malmö, Sweden. In doing so, it aims to elucidate the dynamics of innovation at the boundaries of industries, as experienced by individuals and small groups engaged in the process. The conclusion of the chapter focuses on the broader issue of the relative slowness of innovation in the tourism industry, as well as the shortage of private sector-driven initiatives that address this issue. It also touches upon the critical issue of the platformisation of tourism industries and its potential effects on cross-innovation.

This chapter summarises all the results of the section that studied cross-innovation processes between audiovisual media and tourism sectors. It relies first on the review of existing forms of cooperation and cross-innovation between sectors. Second, on the meso-level analysis of structural aspects that shape innovation processes in these sectors. Third, on a micro-level ethnography of a start-up company innovating at the intersections between the film and tourism industries. We learn that there are two core ‘rules’ that motivate sectoral cooperation – first, the broader platformisation of tourism and second, the emergence of augmented reality as a technique to augment experiences at locations. Regarding the second rule especially, we learned that the main innovator and innovation motivator in this area is currently the public sector, driven also by cultural policy goals. But local tourism sector small and medium-sized enterprises appear to not be particularly driven by innovation-orientated cooperation with other sectors.

This chapter concludes the book on cross-innovation between audiovisual media industries and three other sectors – education, health care and tourism. It emphasises, first, the importance of platformisation as a socio-economic and technological process in framing all cross-innovation processes. It highlights how the rather full platformisation of tourism has negatively affected the interest of the tourism industry small and medium-sized enterprises to cooperate with local media and gaming industries in search of new solutions. Relatedly it proposes a generic conflict between platformisation of specific fields and the health of thematic local cross-innovation systems involving media and creative sectors. It then discusses that the inherent fragmentation of the health and education sectors has not allowed their international platformisation, but constitutes challenges to innovators interested in international scalability. It also discusses the reasons why two publicly coordinated cross-innovation processes – one involving the use of virtual reality in health care and another using augmented reality – have given different results – one a relative success and the other not as of yet. At the end of the chapter final definitions of cross-innovation are offered and the operationalisation of the term and the associated conceptual approach are assessed.