Knowledge bases, innovativeness and competitiveness in creative industries: The case of Hamburg’s video game developers

Abstract

Due to its growing economic power, creative industries have climbed scholars’ and policy-makers’ agendas in recent years. However, in comparison with a high number of cluster studies on rather traditional industries, systematic research on knowledge production, innovation processes and competitiveness in creative industry clusters is still underrepresented. This paper aims to fill this gap by investigating the video game development industry in Hamburg, Germany, from a knowledge base perspective. The paper concludes that both the symbolic and the synthetic knowledge are the dominant elements that contribute to video game development in Hamburg. On a more critical note, it doubts whether the currently discussed knowledge base perspective is sufficient to explain the competitiveness of creative industries and proposes to analyse procedural knowledge in future research in order to be able to do so.