The socio-economic impact of technological innovation. Models and analysis of the digital technologies for cultural and creative industries.

The research activity synthesized in this book starts from the consideration that there is a growing need to verify how public investment in innovation can guarantee the best value for money and maximise the impact on economy and society. The cultural heritage sector represents a strategic target for the R&D investment in Europe and it is strongly needed to have also here a set of tools able to assess the socio-economic impact of projects’ activities. With the aim of supporting the maximisation of the research outputs effectiveness and efficiency, thanks to the MAXICULTURE project (FP7-ICT-2011-9-601070) , our research team analysed projects’ outputs both in terms of innovation and improvement related to the state of the art of the ICTs for creative and cultural sector, and in terms of transferability of results to the wider society in general and to the supply-industry in particular. During the research activates we: • performed the analysis of the DigiCult domain through the literature review and analysis of EC FP7 Call 1, Call 3, Call 6, Call 9 and Europeana projects; • developed the assessment methodology for the DigiCult projects’; • gathered the feedback from experts and projects on the methodology through webinars and online questionnaires; • developed the Self-Assessment Toolkit (SAT); • performed the assessment of 19 projects in the DigiCult domain by using the data gathered through the Self-Assessment Toolkit. The analysis produced interesting results such as: • the design of a specific Hype Cycle for the DigiCult projects; • a better understanding about the innovation dynamics in the sector; • the information on how to improve the diffusion of the knowledge generated by DigiCult projects; • the information on how to improve the socio-economic impact of DigiCult projects.