1. Background and context
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Individual Creative Industry companies have benefitted from technology programme investments since its inception in 2004, through participation in collaborative R&D calls in ICT and manufacturing technologies in particular. In this section, we explain the rationale for selecting the Creative Industries as a target sector in its own right and summarise our activity to date.
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The Technology Strategy Board identified the Creative Industries as an Application Area in July 2007. The inclusion was because we recognised the important contribution that the sector makes to the UK economy and the role that technology plays in driving the growth of new products and services. Technology Strategy Board interventions in this sector are intended to play a strategic role in stimulating the development of new business ideas and approaches. In many instances these interventions also support the exploitation of investments that TSB has made in related, underpinning technologies such as Information Communication Technologies, Electronics and Materials. See the Technology Strategy Board strategy Connect and Catalyse for further details.
For the purposes of this strategy, our starting point for a definition of the Creative Industries has been the Department of Culture, Media and Sport's 13 sub-sectors. Later in this document, we propose a refinement of that definition which we have adopted to clarify our strategic focus.