The design sector represents a pivotal yet underexplored component of the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs), playing a strategic role in fostering innovation, competitiveness, and sustainability across the broader economy. This paper addresses this gap by investigating how creativity relates to technology, innovation and environmental sustainability within the design industry. We rely on an original dataset covering a sample of Italian design firms operating in 2023. We complement firm-level information with novel data collected through a web-scraping algorithm that identifies the presence and intensity of keywords related to creativity, innovation, technology, and sustainability on designers’ websites. Combining descriptive statistical analysis with econometric estimations, we show that creativity is the most salient dimension in designers’ self-presentation, while sustainability receives comparatively less emphasis. The results show how creativity is linked to the use of diverse technologies rather than to higher overall levels of technological innovation. Creativity is also positively correlated with both the presence and intensity of sustainability-related content. Regarding technological innovation, sectoral heterogeneity emerges clearly, and interaction designers appear to be the most technologically oriented. Lower sectoral difference emerges, however, in environmental sustainability practises.
Segre et al. (Wed,) studied this question.