Kevin’s research interests revolve around a wide range of areas such as innovation, spatial development, food sustainability, devolution, Governance, the Foundational Economy and Civic+Social Enterprise. He has taught the Creative Cardiff team much about economic geography and innovation clusters, sharing inspiration of examples in the UK and around the world.
He writes:
Far from being the product of the solitary and heroic entrepreneur, innovation is a collective social endeavour, a team sport.
One of the great achievements of Creative Cardiff is that it has recognised and acted on this insight from the start. That’s why it has tried to create a sense of shared destiny among the many small enterprises that make up the creative sector in the Cardiff Capital Region and why it has realised that the main problem for a firm is not being small but being lonely – that is to say, not being part of a cluster where small enterprises collaborate to find joint solutions to common problems.
Successful clusters never stand still. They constantly evolve through new ways of working, spreading and sharing the burden of innovation. That’s why one of the challenges for the next five years is for Creative Cardiff to seed and catalyse a form of cluster leadership that is even more collaborative and even more distributed so that different people at different times can take the lead in initiating ideas and projects.
The creative industries are now a priority sector for the Cardiff Capital Region and over the next five years I hope and believe that Creative Cardiff can help the sector to fulfil its potential – not merely in economic terms but also as a source of inspiration to demonstrate that culture, health and wellbeing are the true hallmarks of a successful city-region.
