Universities as innovation agents for the creative industries – An exploratory quantitative study from Wales

Universities are increasingly recognized as key actors in regional innovation ecosystems, yet their role as “innovation agents” for the creative industries remains underexplored. While previous scholarship highlights universities’ contributions through research, skills provision, and technology transfer, little empirical evidence exists on how they amplify the innovation capacity of creative firms. This article addresses this gap through an exploratory quantitative study of 385 firms in Wales, drawing on data from the Clwstwr programme (2019–2021), a university-led initiative. We develop an analytical framework focusing on four major innovation drivers - skills and knowledge, networking, training, and funding - and examine whether university engagement enhances their effect on firm innovativeness. Employing econometric modelling, we find that firms engaged with the university exhibit significantly stronger relationships between each driver and overall innovativeness than firms outside the university-programme. Notably, university engagement magnifies the marginal effects of networking, training, and funding on innovativeness, with funding showing particularly large gains. These results provide novel evidence that universities can act as effective innovation agents, going beyond traditional roles of knowledge creation to actively shape firm-level innovation processes in the creative industries. The findings have implications for firms, which can leverage university partnerships to strengthen innovation outcomes; for universities, which can expand their role in local creative economies; and for policymakers, who can design targeted support mechanisms to embed universities within regional innovation strategies. By situating the Welsh case within broader debates on creative clusters and university–industry collaboration, this study contributes to understanding how universities drive innovation in under-researched sectors such as the creative industries. • Universities act as innovation agents in creative industry clusters. • University engagement significantly enhances firms' innovativeness. • Study shows universities amplify impact of networking, skills, training, funding. • Firms engaged with universities show greater innovation than non-engaged firms. • Econometric analysis using Clwstwr programme data provides empirical evidence.