Creative supply-chain linkages and innovation: Do the creative industries stimulate business innovation in the wider economy?

Knowledge transfer between businesses is facilitated by their supply-chain relationships. Creative businesses in sectors such as advertising, architecture and software are heavily engaged in business-to-business activity. This opens up the possibility that the creative industries, as a focal point for creativity, stimulate and support business innovation in the wider economy. This study combines data on business-to-business relationships between creative and non-creative sectors, based on input-output tables for the UK, and firm-level data on business innovation, taken from the Community Innovation Survey, to explore whether the creative industries support innovation through this channel.