What is ECOCRIN?
SUSTAINABLE AND INNOVATIVE CREATIVE ECOSYSTEMS. Ecological Approach to Policy Innovation for Creative Sectors in Finland
ECOCRIN contributes to innovation policy and related research in two ways. First, ECOCRIN addresses how policies could support ‘unleashing’ the potential of creative sectors for innovation, growth and internationalisation. Second, the project experiments and suggests new ways of designing and implementing policies targeted at creative sectors.
Policy profiling of recent national and regional policies supporting private ecosystem actors is completed. The policy analysis results into a national level understanding about how well the present priorities in cultural and innovation policies are aligned together and how well they recognize and capture the needs of the ecosystem actors. Consequently, the policy analysis brings up the most essential topics to pay attention to in modelling an ecological approach to innovation policy for creative sectors.
Given the co-creational research strategy, ECOCRIN will engage the key stakeholders to joint modelling of the ecological approach to innovation policies for creative sectors and to co-creation of Policy Briefs and the Roadmap for implementing the co-created model.
The systematic policy innovation – an ecological approach to innovation policy for creative sectors – will be created, modelled and piloted in a real-life setting during the ECOCRIN project in close interaction with creative ecosystems and related actors, as well as with policy makers and stakeholders. The key novelty and uniqueness of the project is to model ways to combine bottom-up creative ecosystem needs with top-down innovation and cultural policies in policies aiming at unleashing the potential of creative sectors for growth and innovation.
The ECOCRIN project looks beyond the sole actors and pure economic value and generates bottom-up knowledge on the needs of the creative ecosystems. This gives a solid ground for the ultimate aim to design and model innovation policy which on one hand takes into account the bottom-up needs of the creative ecosystem and on the other hand, integrates the needs to cultural and innovation policies through interactive and co-creational process.
Empirical Context of the ECOCRIN Project
The selection of empirical research context is guided by the purpose of understanding the broader regional category in Finland. Each of the selected three locations (Kuhmo, Pori, Turku) is relevant in its own and together they provide a versatile, in-depth view of several types of regions and regional dynamics in creative ecosystems in Finland. These sites incorporate emerging or developing ecosystems with a combination of promising and developed industries, engaged public players as well as locally strong and internationally recognised cultural activities.
In the case location of Pori, ECOCRIN utilises existing DISCE-interviews collected in 2020–21 to examine the bottom-up needs of the creative ecosystems. DISCE regional case study reports of Lund and Liepãja are used to understand how innovation and cultural policies are embedded in the ecosystems.
