SPINning the Web of Creative Practice

I'm spending the next three days at SPIN - the Speculation and Innovation conference. Not a long way to travel as it's literally just held outside my office door here at QUT. The subtitle for SPIN is 'applying practice-led research in the creative industries', and so it's mainly dealing with the question of recognising creative practice as research - an important issue for the Creative Industries Faculty in particular, but beyond this for creative practitioners throughout Australia and the world.

We're now starting the first keynote session which will set the theme for the conference; it will be delivered by Arun Sharma, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research & Commercialisation at QUT after an official welcome by Rod Wissler, Director of Research and Research Training. Arun speaks on competitive advantage in the globalised research environment. He notes that from the perspective of commercialisation of research there exists a hierarchy of impact, which determines the public governmental perception of researchers - and he also reminds us that internationally this impact will be determined increasingly in the Chinese, Indian, and Japanese markets. Success and impact in cutting-edge fields also determines the quality of life for a country's population, of course - and these fields now stretch well beyond pure science and technology. Australia in particular may not be able to compete in these fields alone, given the current economic climate. It may need to seek its successes in innovation rather than manufacturing and service, for example - exploiting what Arun calls its domain knowledge in the fields where it is a leader (he mentions mining management software and bionic ear implants for example) but leaving other fields to those countries which are leading there.

The local context must be taken into account, then - but is existing domain knowledge enough? It is always possible for other players to enter the market and build their own domain knowledge (domain knowledge is only sustainable for half to one decade, Arun suggests). However, Arun points out, culture is the ultimate domain knowledge - by and large it cannot be outsourced elsewhere. Culture - as long as it remains 'cool' - is a sustainable economic advantage. The cultural and creative industries are therefore a source of ultimate competitive advantage, and hence very important to national economies.

So what are Australia's cultural advantages? Arun mentions its quality way of life, its unique tropical and sub-tropical architecture, its fashion (which, perhaps uniquely, spans the developed world and tropical and sub-tropical environments), its sports (both sportspeople themselves and sports managers and coordinators), and its law graduates (with their strong knowledge of Asian environments). However, on a global level the future of research and development is changing in many ways: universities can no longer rely on government funding, and therefore research can be no longer mainly curiosity-driven, for better or for worse. Today, there is pressure on funding because more public money has to be diverted to other areas (e.g. health care for aging populations), and so governments are more and more looking for efficiency and commercialisability in research. Already, therefore, the trend is towards usage-driven research - Arun quips that 'from now on there will only be research that matters and research that doesn't matter'. And in the corporate sector the situation is just the same, since competition is increasing and monopolies are disappearing - there is less money around and therefore corporations are beginning to partner with universities for their research projects.

Further, the economies (especially in Western nations) are changing from manufacturing towards services - and therefore more research opportunities are emerging in this area. Product research remains sexy, and research costs are amortised through sales of products, while service research works differently: it requires experienced consultants to deploy new services in the field, and amortisation is therefore more diffused. However, services companies create more jobs for the economy, and can grow organically if the service becomes popular.

This offers a model for commercialising practice-led research: service companies can be formed which offer the service developed through practice-led research. Impact of ressearch in this sense can be measured through concentric circles of influence on the world, from closely aligned disciplinary colleagues through to other disciplines through to the wider public (probably with a few further steps in between). So, for practice-led research, what are these circles, what are the links between the researchers and the wider world? The impact of practice-led research will be measured through the answers to these questions, and is likely to determine future funding.