Availability of an appropriately skilled workforce is recognised as a challenge in The Creative Britain and Digital Britain strategies. Although skills are the primary responsibility of other agencies such as the Sector Skills Councils and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the Technology Strategy Board is well placed to assist through the exploitation of its Knowledge Transfer Networks and Partnerships.

As discussed previously, there is a growing need to provide creative businesses with access to trusted sources of information about emerging technology trends and the opportunity to explore and evaluate the potential implications for their businesses. In an increasingly converged world, where delineations between traditional sub-sectors are blurring, there are potential dividends from importing know-how from other sub-sectors and other industries. Two very different examples demonstrate this: the transfer of understanding about narrative in episodic structures from TV to the computer games sector and the application of process control systems from manufactured goods sector to film production.

We also recognise there are benefits to promoting greater multi-disciplinary collaboration to stimulate transfer of creative industry good practice to other sectors, for example the application of:

• Design thinking in technology driven R&D projects;
• 3D visualisation techniques to interpret and manage complex systems; and
• Computer Games know-how in experiential training and education.