• New research from Nesta and the University of Sussex reveals role of interdisciplinary skills on firms’ performance

Companies that harness art and science skills outperform their competitors in terms of sales, employment, productivity and innovation, finds new research from UK innovation charity Nesta and the University of Sussex.

In The Fusion Effect, published today, the authors used official data1 to analyse the contribution of employees’ science and arts skills in relation to companies’ performance between 2010 and 2012. The research comes at a time when the government is promoting STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) rather than STEAM - with the addition of Arts - in spite of a burgeoning creative economy2.

The report found that ‘fused’ companies - those that combine the two disciplines within their workforce - show 8 percent higher sales growth than science-only firms. They are also 2 percent more likely to bring radical innovations to market. The report estimates that 3.5 million people are employed in such businesses which despite accounting for around a tenth of UK companies, employ roughly a fifth of all workers.

Examples of companies that show the ‘fusion effect’ include Sugru, the world's first mouldable glue that turns into rubber, created by a team of designers and material scientists to overcome household and industrial design and production hurdles. Double Negative, a multi-Oscar award winning visual effects studio, also combined scientific and artistic capabilities to model phenomena like wormholes and black holes for the Hollywood film, Interstellar.

Policymakers have long prioritised supporting companies to access the skills they need for growth but there has been no measure of what skills combination is most desirable. Drawing on this new evidence The Fusion Effect recommends that policymakers support the growing STEAM education movement alongside calls for greater investment in the UK workforce’s STEM skills.

Hasan Bakhshi, director of creative and digital economy at Nesta, comments: "This research reveals that firms in possession of a mix of arts and science skills perform better than those with science skills alone. The UK is blessed with a large numbers of these firms, no doubt helping to explain the strength of its creative economy. Education should build on this strength by making it easier for young people to pursue a combination of arts and science subjects.”

Dr Josh Siepel, SPRU - the Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex says: “Our findings show that firms combining arts and science skills are prevalent throughout the economy, and these firms grow faster across all sectors.  Creative skills play a vital role in unlocking growth throughout the economy, and this research opens up new ways of thinking about the vital complementariness between two areas that have long been seen as incompatible.”

The Fusion Effect: the economic returns to combining arts and science skills is available on request.

Nesta previously published The Creative Economy and the Future of Employment, which called for the government to end the bias against multi–disciplinary education in our education system – turning STEM into STEAM. You can read more at www.nesta.org.uk.

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Footnotes:

1. The  authors used the UK Innovation Survey (UKIS) and the Business Structure Database (BSD) to measure a firm’s innovation and performance and UKIS to measure a series of potential drivers of innovation and performance, including which skills the firm deploys.
2. The creative economy employed 2.8 million people in 2014 compared with 2.4 million people in 2011 according to the Department for Culture Media and Sport’s Creative Industries: Focus on Employment June 2015.

About Nesta: Nesta is the UK's innovation foundation. We help people and organisations bring great ideas to life. We do this by providing investments and grants and mobilising research, networks and skills. We are an independent charity and our work is enabled by an endowment from the National Lottery. Nesta is a registered charity in England and Wales 1144091 and Scotland SC042833

www.nesta.org.uk / @nesta_uk

About the University of Sussex: The University of Sussex was the first of the new wave of UK universities founded in the 1960s, receiving its Royal Charter in August 1961. It is among the leading research universities in the UK, with 98 per cent of its research rated as world leading, internationally excellent or internationally recognised (REF 2014). About the researchers: Dr Josh Siepel, Lecturer in Management at SPRU, researches and teaches in the areas of management, entrepreneurship, innovation and entrepreneurial finance and policy. Dr Roberto Camerani is a Research Fellow at SPRU and Dr Monica Masucci is a Lecturer in Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the Department of Business and Management.

For more information contact Laura Scarrott in Nesta’s press office on 0207 438 2697/ [email protected]