Research into R&D activities by the Creative Industries

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) was seeking to appoint a Supplier to undertake a study on research and development (R&D) activity in the creative industries. In particular we wanted to understand:

• The current R&D activities in the creative industries;
• Any barriers or enablers to carrying out such activity including access to support; and
• The benefits of R&D activities for creative industry businesses that undertake it.

DCMS would like a study to build our understanding of R&D activities undertaken by creative businesses in the UK, the challenges creative businesses face in carrying out R&D activities, and any barriers to accessing public support and tax incentives.

The research should collect new firm-level data using robust methods to meet the aims set out above and which are discussed in more detail below.

Deliverables

The main deliverables are expected to be:

• An agreed sampling strategy

• Survey materials including the questionnaire, recruitment materials etc.

• A short report following cognitive testing to inform pilot design.

• A short document setting out the findings from the pilot survey to determine whether the full fieldwork should go ahead.

• Draft report for DCMS to comment on.

• Final report to present clear and concise descriptive analysis of the survey findings that will be published by DCMS. The report should be for a wide audience including creative businesses and government. It should have an executive summary of key findings and be around 20 pages long. It should be in an accessible format in line with guidelines from the cabinet office. 1

• Dataset with survey responses and fields for data linking to be used by DCMS for further analysis in SPSS and Excel formats.

• A presentation of the results to be held in DCMS with the Creative Economy team.