How Creative Expertise Strengthens Clients’ Innovation, Differentiation, and Market SuccessCreative industries make companies more innovative
Creative industries bring new ideas, specialized expertise, and fresh perspectives to businesses. They strengthen innovation processes, further develop products and services, and help companies stand out from the competition. Their impact lies in the economic value that creative expertise generates for their customers.
The Impact of the Creative Economy on the Company
Creative Industries contribute
- New Ideas
- specialized expertise
- Creative Perspectives
- Design and Communication
- additional skills and networks
Arise within the company
- New and Better Products
- Innovations
- higher-quality offers
- Stronger brands and greater brand awareness
Impact is being felt in the market
More differentiation, more innovation, more competitiveness.
Creative industries expand the scope of solutions.48% bring new ideas into the company
48% of client companies cite new ideas and approaches as an important reason for collaborating with Creative Industries. An equal number seek the higher level of technical expertise offered by external Creative Industries experts, while 46% require expertise they do not possess themselves. Price, on the other hand, is hardly a deciding factor: Only 6% engage creative industries primarily because the service can be provided more cost-effectively.
The Effect
Creative industries are not simply an extension of the production line. They bring new knowledge and new perspectives to a company and open up solutions that would not have emerged internally—or at least not in the same way.
Creative competence becomes innovation competence.40% of companies are boosting their innovation performance through the creative industries
40% of client companies consider creative services to be highly important for introducing innovations or improving their products and services. Notably, the creative industries themselves underestimate this effect. Only 28% of creative companies believed that their services were correspondingly important for their clients’ innovation.
The Effect
Creative industries don’t just shape innovation. They help innovation happen in the first place. They combine creative ideas with their clients’ expertise to create new or improved products, services, and solutions.
The Effect
Creative industries don’t just foster innovation. They also help companies make the added value of their offerings visible, understandable, and distinctive.
Creative services increase market impact.48% of companies strengthen their image through creative services
The most significant impact cited by client companies is an improvement in their image: 48% consider creative services to be highly important in this regard.
Other key effects:
- 40%: more innovation or better products and services
- 37%: Greater differentiation from the competition
- 31%: higher brand awareness
- 31%: higher-quality offerings.
Creative services set businesses apart.37% of female customers in the creative industries stand out more from the competition
More than one in three client companies believe that collaborating with Creative Industries plays a major role in helping them stand out from the competition. At the same time, companies report an improved image, greater brand awareness, and higher-quality offerings.
The Effect
Creative industries help companies avoid competing solely on price. They create differentiation through innovation, design, user-centricity, communication, and branding, and transform services into offerings with recognizable added value.
New ideas, additional expertise, higher quality, networks, and increased capacity as a result59% of customers work closely with creative professionals
59% of companies work with their partners in the creative industries in stable, trusting relationships, integrating creative professionals into their internal processes. Companies that collaborate particularly closely with the creative industries cite new ideas, additional expertise, higher quality, networks, and additional capacity as benefits of this collaboration.
The Effect
Creative industries generate the greatest value when they are not simply tasked with implementing a finished idea, but are involved in a co-creative process from the very beginning.
The value of creative work lies in the added value it provides.When creative professionals are involved early on, they evolve from service providers into innovation partners.
For 63% of client companies, quality is the most important criterion when awarding creative contracts. 40% cite trust, and 26% cite the level of innovation. In contrast, only 15% cite price as the most important criterion.
The Effect
Companies do not primarily purchase creative expertise to save costs. They invest in quality, ideas, and innovation—and thus in their own competitiveness.
The Sixth Austrian Creative Industries Report, “Creative Industries and Their Market,” was commissioned by Kreativwirtschaft Austria in 2015. The study was authored by the Institute for Advanced Studies, KMU Forschung Austria, and the Center for European Economic Research. The report focuses in particular on the demand for creative services by businesses and the public sector, the concrete benefits for clients, and the collaboration between the creative industries and their clients.