Knowledge-intensive Entrepreneurship in Manufacturing and Creative Industries: Same, Same, but Different

To date, there is little empirical evidence on the specificities and commonalities of entrepreneurship in the creative industries relative to other sectors. This paper explores this issue by comparing knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship (KIE) in the manufacturing and creative industries by examining their differences and similarities. Given the lack of prior studies, our comparison is exploratory and based on descriptive statistics. We use survey data that comes from a large-scale Eurupean Union research project (AEGIS) which studied KIE firms across 10 countries and a diverse set of industries. Our analysis shows that KIE firms in creative industries resemble those in manufacturing in several dimensions, but also that there are some pronounced differences, such as (i) a higher level of knowledge intensity of KIE firms in creative industries, with higher educational attainment of both founders and employees; (ii) that personal financing plays a much larger role in creative industries; (iii) KIE in creative industries focuses more on service innovations, but introduces radical innovations to a lesser extent; and (iv) they remain smaller in terms of number of employees and turnover, but are more profitable than KIE in manufacturing relative to their size. We end the paper by pointing out directions for future research, based on our exploratory results.