Realizing capabilities—academic creativity and the creative industries

Higher education institutions (HEIs) worldwide are in an era of change. In England universities have been challenged to realize their potential their potential under guise of the so called ‘Third Mission’, which has emphasised the commercialization and technology transfer of academic research. Much of the existing literature is devoted to the scientific dimension of the Third Mission, with little if any recognition as to the non-scientific creative capacity of HEIs. Indeed, the absence of (non-scientific) academic creativity from the Third Mission of HEIs, and by other stakeholders such as the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), means HEIs are not realizing their potential. Realizing the creative potential of HEIs is the second wave of the entrepreneurial university, and entails a new research agenda, as institutions seek to protect and commercialize creative intellectual property (IP). This paper focuses on the spaces and resources of cultural quarters (CQs) as an example of a specific domain in and with which HEIs engage to realize the potential of their non-scientific creative knowledge. In short, the paper proposes that the creative capacity of HEIs represents an under-exploited resource of the new or knowledge- based economy, of which HEIs are themselves key organizations.