Between a Hard Rock and a Soft Place: design, creative practice and innovation

This paper discusses the contribution that the arts, humanities and social sciences can make to innovation systems and innovation policy by embedding design and creative practice in innovation. Innovation policy is a major economic development strategy—a strategy that is being adopted and implemented by cities, regions and nations to achieve economic results, measured as positive changes in employment, income, exports and productivity. This paper argues that innovation policy should reflect broader perspectives, and the contribution of the
arts, humanities and social sciences to innovation. We do not attempt to cover all contributions the humanities and social sciences can make to innovation (for example, contextual historical, economic or geographic analysis). However, by focusing on design and
creative practice, we make a more general argument that innovation comes from deploying a wider range of disciplines in research than is often considered