If there is one certainty, it is that innovation is difficult to implement, that it is risky, but that it can be an important driver of success. This subject closely affects Quebec digital creation, which is always offering more cutting-edge experiences.
To maintain innovation, we must face the challenges of financing, on the one hand, and innovation management, a key skill consisting of piloting the development of a product through the phases of ideation, monitoring, conceptualization, prototyping and production.
It was around several themes, including innovation, that the actors and institutions of the cultural and creative industries came together during the Xn Summit in September 2023.
According to the participants, the absence of a common framework for innovation makes its accomplishment difficult.
Photo credit: Victor Diaz Lamich
In terms of definition, for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 1 , innovation is the implementation of a new (or significantly improved) product, a new marketing method or a new organizational method.
The Xn Québec community is therefore innovating: it is renewing formats, distribution methods and digital creativity in general. Indeed, several studios are marketing their own technologies, such as Iregular, Float4, Transversal, ED Film, Felix & Paul, Silent Partners and Lüz Studio 2 .
The end goal of course remains the experience produced, and the renewal of the ways of distributing creations contributes greatly to this 3 .
Innovation is the implementation of a new (or significantly improved) product, a new marketing method, or a new organizational method.
However, the definition of innovation tends to be more specific depending on the different organizations.
For example, the Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Energy encourages invention, development and marketing 4 .
For industry, incentives then mainly take the form of tax credits. They therefore cover new products for which a risk is taken, when issues, hypotheses, developments and validation methods have been identified.
For their part, organizations such as SODEC and FMC offer innovation support programs. Research and development, as well as experimentation, are encouraged, mainly with the aim of perpetuating developments for future products.
It is through funding cycles dedicated to innovation that these organizations make it possible to integrate conceptualization and prototyping phases during the development of a digital production.
However, most digital creations are funded by project and require knowing a large part of the results in advance.
It is probably in the formulation of the deliverables of each stage of the life of digital creation projects that a methodology could be developed that would benefit from innovation.
Among these deliverables, monitoring, proof of concepts and validation of hypotheses are tools that contribute to the structuring of innovation and thus to a controlled management of uncertainty and risk.
The effectiveness of these tools, on the other hand, could well depend on the intervention of specialists tied to the projects from their early phases.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Oslo Manual: Guidelines for Collecting and Interpreting Innovation Data , 3rd edition, OECD Publishing, Paris, 2005, 184 pages.
See Iregular Studio ‘s CURSOR system , Float4 ‘s Realmotion’sTM generative visual software , Transversal ‘s Interactive Light Baton , ED Film’s plug-ins , Felix & Paul’s L’Infini project , and Silent Partners and Lüz Studio’s Augmented Scenography project .
See the VR to go project from Studio PHI. See also Hubblo , the first Quebec hub exclusively dedicated to 360 (fulldome) works and their distribution.
Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Energy (MEIE). Quebec Strategy for Research and Investment in Innovation 2022-2027 . May 19, 2022.
The Lab148 cooperative
The Lab148 cooperative offers a support service in technological innovation. It is composed of specialists in video mapping, sound spatialization, technological assemblies, 3D engines, telepresence, software development, implementation of artificial intelligence and technical management of innovative digital projects.
