Cross-sector Innovation: A Handbook on Creative Competitive Advantages

The aim of this handbook is to help improve your opportunities for getting started on innovative and business development projects that reach beyond your own sector, commonly known as ’Cross-sector innovation’, or ’Cross innovation’ for short. We believe that there is a need for an easily read innovation handbook that can reach out to all sectors and potential partners whose point of departure, language use and understanding of customers is often very different to that of businesses. These differences constitute a resource for business development. If exploited they can lead to new ways of doing things and help us breakaway from the lull of the modes of expression and methods ‘customarily’ employed in business development.

The handbook focuses on the interaction of “traditional’ businesses and sectors that belong to those known as the creative and the experience industries, i.e. designers, musicians, stageartists, festivals, event organizers, computer game developers, media, amusements and attractions, amongst others. In this handbook we use the collective term experience experts, as this is precisely what they have in common - their expertise in experience - and because this expertise is what makes collaborating with experts from these industries worthwhile. Our main point is that collaboration with experience experts can lead to new value, because these experts have new perspectives on customers, users, audiences, guests etc. and have other angles on communication and development. This value can be harnessed if one can pinpoint the correct point of departure for collaboration, i.e. define who would be the right partners to have, and create a framework that will ensure that one can have a good, business-oriented dialogue. This is exactly what this handbook can help you achieve.