Art of innovating in the arts: Disentangling determinants of technological and symbolic innovations in creative industries— Evidence from Canadian museums

Abstract

This study investigates the factors driving innovation in museums by incorporating both technological and symbolic innovations. Unlike previous research, it employs a comprehensive set of determinants to examine their impact on technological and symbolic innovations. Based on data from 250 Canadian museums and a multivariate path model, we simultaneously estimate eight types of innovations, four types of technological innovations (product, process, organizational, marketing) and four types of symbolic innovations (artistic, aesthetic, cultural, audience). The findings indicate that innovation appears to emerge through complex interplays between internal capabilities, market responsiveness, and external relationships. Resource-related factors such as technological infrastructure, financial assets, and artistic capabilities show differentiated impacts across types of innovation, suggesting that in museums, innovation is not uniformly resource-driven. Human capital, artistic creativity, and R&D investments demonstrate more limited or selective effects. Market orientation, particularly visitor orientation, emerges as a relevant driver of symbolic innovations, while custodial orientation, collaboration, and co-creation strategies have weaker or isolated impacts. Hence, the determinants differ across types of innovation, with some being specific to particular types thereof. Moreover, the study reveals complementarities between several pairs of types of innovation including Process and Aesthetic innovation, Artistic and Cultural innovation, and Aesthetic and Audience innovation. Finally, the degrees of complementarity between technological innovations are higher than those between symbolic innovations. These findings highlight the complex and contingent nature of innovation in museums, underlining, for museum managers, the importance of resource alignment, market-driven orientation, and external engagement strategies for successful innovation.

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