Mr Juan Mateos-García

Research Officer, Centre for Research in Innovation Management (CENTRIM)

University of Sussex

University of Brighton

User-centric Innovation: a Key Policy Agenda for the Knowledge Economy
March 2007 to March 2008
Microsoft
Relentless
Sony
SplashDamage

Creating_games: Mapping and Upgrading Creative Processes for Sustained Innovation — The challenge facing UK Electronic Games Developers

"map the changing production and business development processes of electronic games; isolate critical tension points in game creation;"

"identify the improvement and upgrading challenges, difficulties and needs – both generic and specific – of the differentiated business models; examine which core creative processes can be subjected to systematic innovation management upgrading;"

"develop and test a design specification for a process improvement and upgrading methodology which is able to incorporate both creative and routinised processes;"

"a balancing act or tension between creativity and management structure; second, a view that routinising certain tasks releases resources for creativity in others; third, routines and practices that are designed to effect creative outcomes."

"The sample is structured to include developers operating across the five main business models deployed in the sector. These are work-for-hire, super-developers, original Intellectual Property development, specialist/niche development and service/tools providers."

October 2006 — September 2008

Chemistry,Creative North, Exient, Pivotal Studios, The Project Zoo, Relentless, Rockstar Leeds, Zöe Mode

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Dr Andrew Grantham
Senior Research Fellow
Andrew is also working with colleagues on a project investigating the interface of creativity and routinisation within the videogame industry in the UK and looking at user-led innovation mediated by digital social networking; for example, MySpace, LinkedIn and UKVillages.

Dr Jonathan Sapsed
AIM Innovation Fellow and Principal Research Fellow
Jonathan is Project Manager of the EPSRC grant ‘Mapping and Upgrading Creative Processes for Sustained Innovation: The challenge facing UK Electronic Games Developers’, which involves eight of the leading games studios. This follows an earlier exploratory project comparing development practice in the UK and the USA, for AIM with Professor John Bessant and Professor Robert DeFillippi.