Abstract
ABSTRACTHeritage institutions house cultural and research content, which is the key source to stimulate soft innovation. Despite the potential, heritage collections are mostly inaccessible via digital mediums. We analyse the macro, meso and micro conditions of heritage organizations across Europe to identify the key determinants that foster soft innovation as reflected by the share of collection digitization and online publication. We find that organizations respond positively to an environment of high consumer digital literacy and sustainable resource allocation that enables slack, skilled staff and long-term strategic planning. Innovation is thus, in fact, enhanced by digital literacy from both producers and consumers.
Highlights
It has been estimated that cultural and research content held in European memory institutions has a market value of €27 billion
Among the most important positive determinants for innovation we find the level of digital literacy and level of education at national level, a historic familiarity with imaging and the presence of a policy to guide digitization
These themes emerged from the literature on micro analysis and were supported by the preliminary data analysis as key differentiation factors for the share of digitization and for the ability of European heritage institutions to innovate
Summary
It has been estimated that cultural and research content held in European memory institutions has a market value of €27 billion. This represents ‘the biggest single information content resource for the creation of value-added information content and services’ (Jancic et al 2012, 4). Memory institutions have not been able to fully adopt the digital technology in order to become part of the information economy (Navarrete 2014a). This innovation gap has received little attention while the social expectation of heritage content positioned within the information economy grows. Research has focused on the creative industries and their ability to innovate yet little is understood about the keepers of large information repositories made up of heritage collections
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