Creative Economy Blog

Next Gen.

Daniel Oppenheimer - 01.02.2011

The Next Gen. report shows how we can shed fresh light on much-debated problems when we ground our thinking in proper research on a specific question

We published on our website today the Next Gen. report on the skills needed for the video games and effects industries. Here’s a couple of key findings from the research we carried out:

• People have no idea how successful the UK is in these industries (very, at least to date). They assume that “cool” things like VFX and games must be made in either California or the Far East.
• People also have no idea what skills are needed to get jobs in this UK success story. They tend to assume it’s ICT. In fact, what the industry wants is computer science (not the same as ICT at all), but also maths, physics – and art. After all, these things need to look good as well as work technically. If you’re a maths whiz who can draw, there are some exciting high-tech jobs for you out there.
• The report shows that the problem for the UK is that we don’t have enough people to meet the demand for our games and VFX products, because our young people are not studying the right things at school or at university. That means that they are missing out on the chance to get rewarding jobs in a high-tech expanding industry earning serious export revenues.  We need to tackle that, and the report sets out some ideas for how to do so.

But there’s a broader point here too.The report illustrates the value of doing proper research on a specific industry.

Getting away from generalisations

Sadly, the great majority of supposedly serious discussions in the media of issues like competitiveness are heavily reliant on mythical generalisations like: "We have no high-tech industry in the UK because we’re good at inventing things but not at commercialising them”. Conclusion – give up now, we’re doomed because of our mysterious inherent British inability to sell things.

Whereas when you look sector by sector, as we did with this and with our Chips with Everything report on the semiconductor industry in the UK, you see a much more nuanced picture, with sector-specific issues that actually need tackling.

So we will continue to work on carrying out good quality research and practical projects to shed light on both the strengths and the challenges facing innovation in the UK.