Beautiful Innovation: Understanding Management Innovation in the Spanish Arts, Heritage and Recreation Industries

The objective of this paper is to gain an insight into the types of innovation that Spanish firms in arts, heritage and recreation undertook during the period 2006–2011. To achieve this aim we have examined which types of innovation –product, process, marketing and organizational–, have the highest share of the total, and how important organizational innovation is for these firms. The study is based on a sample of firms in the arts, heritage and recreation industries, based on a survey drawn up by the Spanish National Statistics Institute. Three important conclusions can be inferred from the results obtained in this paper for the Spanish case. The first is that, although these sectors are less innovative in technological product and process innovations than other industries (i.e. manufacturing and services), they have a similar share in the case of non-technological innovations (organizational and marketing). The second is that, in these sectors, organizational innovations take precedence, followed by marketing, process and product innovations. Therefore, and contrary to what is usually assumed, innovations in these industries are not focused on products. This second conclusion of the paper constitutes an important contribution to the analysis of the arts, heritage and recreation industries, where product innovation is seen as a distinctive feature. The third is that firms which carried out organizational innovations also undertook marketing innovations, showing that both types of innovations are highly correlated. This situation is not found for other types of innovations.