In short 

• Innovation in cultural and creative industries is under-measured despite its economic and social value. 

• HSRC research shows innovation occurs across formal firms, informal businesses and households, but metrics overlook incremental, community-based creativity 

• Creative sectors demonstrate innovation through blending tradition, technology and performance. 

• Developing dedicated measurement tools can guide evidence-based cultural and innovation policy. 

South African innovation measurement has come a long way since the early 1990s, when the first survey was pioneered by scholars from the University of Cape Town and the predecessor to the National Research Foundation. While early surveys focused almost exclusively on manufacturing firms, South Africa now has innovation surveys covering services, agriculture and informal businesses. Missing from this mix, however, is a systematic focus on measuring innovation in the cultural and creative industries.

South Africa’s Ndlovu Youth Choir delivering a dynamic blend of contemporary isicathamiya, popular music, and high-energy, line-dance routines. Photo: Provided by Ndlovu Youth Choir

In recent years, South Africa’s Ndlovu Youth Choir has delivered sold-out performances to global audiences, from Cape Town’s Artscape Theatre to Carnegie Hall in New York. Conducted by Ralf Schmitt, the 2019 America’s Got Talent finalists from rural Limpopo have mesmerised young and old alike with their dynamic blend of contemporary isicathamiya, popular music and high-energy, line-dance routines. 

Their innovative approach – combining tradition, technology and performance – illustrates the need to examine innovation in South Africa’s cultural and creative industries.  

South Africa has an established tradition of innovation measurement, dating back to the early 1990s, shortly after the first edition of the Oslo Manual (an international measurement standards guidebook) was published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This was a period when South Africa’s newly democratic government was developing its first science and technology (S&T), as well as arts and culture policies, and when researchers, funders and policymakers were beginning to recognise the public value of investing in national longitudinal datasets.  

While innovation measurement advanced in manufacturing and other key sectors of the South African economy, it took almost two decades for the first study of innovation in the cultural and creative industries to emerge. In 2013, Irma Booyens, Neo Molotja and Madalitso Phiri, then researchers at the HSRC, conducted a pioneering study of 22 new media firms in Cape Town. Using definitions from the updated 2005 Oslo Manual and adapting a questionnaire from the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) question bank, they found that these high-technology small, medium and micro enterprises were “dynamic in terms of their technological innovation”, but that innovation activities tended to be “incremental and localised”.  

In 2015, Sibusiso Manzini argued in the South African Journal of Science for greater attention to “soft innovation” in the arts and other creative industries. Not long after that, an international collaboration in early 2020 – involving researchers from the South African Cultural Observatory (SACO), Newcastle University and Coventry University – examined the Cape Town Creative Cluster. Mirroring the UK’s Brighton Fuse study, it surveyed 72 formal businesses to understand the intersections between digital technologies, innovation, intellectual property and diversity.  

South Africa’s Ndlovu Youth Choir delivering a dynamic blend of contemporary isicathamiya, popular music, and high-energy, line-dance routines. Photo: Provided by Ndlovu Youth Choir

It represented a larger-scale attempt to deploy OECD innovation measures in a survey of business enterprises than the HSRC pathfinding study of 2015. The study found strong evidence of so-called “fused firms” – those combining digital and creative capabilities – and showed that these were “more likely to be inclusive and diverse in terms of ownership and employees than unfused firms”. The authors also concluded that supporting such firms would advance social justice and transformation. 

Innovation beyond formal enterprises 

Africa’s scholars have put forward important arguments for contextual approaches to measurement innovation. “Many of Africa’s most effective innovations happen ‘under the radar’ – in farms, markets, workshops and neighbourhoods,” write Abiodun Egbetokun and others for The Conversation (29 July 2025). “This is almost impossible to quantify,” they add.  

“Examples would be a mobile money agent in rural Kenya who finds a way to securely transfer funds without a formal banking system. Or a mechanic in Nigeria who modifies second-hand engines to run on local fuel blends. These are genuine innovations, yet they rarely show up in conventional data.” 

They write: “The problem is not just one of visibility, but of conceptual mismatch. Much of Africa’s innovation is incremental, necessity-driven and based on doing, using and interacting, rather than on structured research and development or formal science. Current indicators simply aren’t designed to capture this.” 

Recent studies focused on the South African context have made some headway in addressing this measurement gap. A study, supported by the United Nations Development Programme’s Accelerator Labs, estimated there are one million informal innovators aged 18 and over in South Africa – around 2.5% of the population. Based on this measurement experiment and its accompanying estimate, the authors developed a typology of household innovators (users, participators, helpers and vendors) and identified several innovation drivers, including a “personal need to use their innovation, enjoyment of the innovation process and learning new skills, altruism to help others and commercial intentions”.  

In March 2021, the HSRC published a report from its Innovation in the South African Informal Sector Survey project. Using a small-area census, the project collected survey data from informal businesses in Sweetwaters, KwaZulu-Natal. Of the 1 289 businesses approached, 996 took part, a response rate of 77.3%. A second study, conducted in Philippi, a Cape Town township, followed in 2024 and covered 970 informal businesses from a total of 1 515 businesses contacted (66.5% response rate). Both studies found compelling evidence of innovation among informal businesses in economic sub-sectors such as food services, hair care and cosmetics, and apparel and homeware. 

A systems approach  

A recent paper in the South African Journal of Science argues for a new step in the country’s innovation agenda. Using innovation measurement scholar Fred Gault’s idea of “measuring innovation everywhere”, this paper reports on a pilot study that addresses why innovation in the cultural and creative industries should be measured using a systems approach – across formal businesses, informal businesses and households, non-profit organisations and government departments or public entities. The paper also outlines how this can be done using several questionnaires adapted to respondents in different institutional sectors, while maintaining a consistent, general definition of innovation. Indeed, it concludes that policymakers in South Africa’s arts, culture and heritage dispensation, as well as those engaged in the national system of innovation, should be both interested and excited to learn about what is invariably the “tip of the iceberg” of innovation in the cultural and creative industries.  

Examples include the use of advanced technologies, such as AI, high-frequency telemetry and camera traps, to protect South Africa’s natural heritage; an experimental theatre space created by a national theatre for artists to test their work for commercial viability; the circular use of Nespresso capsules and Fanta tin cans in craft production; and the creation of new digital content streams using novel “stages” in homes and public spaces. Measuring these activities can reveal valuable insights into collaboration networks, technological barriers and future capability needs – evidence that can guide policy. In principle, much useful innovation evidence can be generated through engaged research with the cultural and creative industries, informing investment decisions by sector administrators. The opportunity now is to put this measurement agenda into practice.  

Research contacts and acknowledgements 

This article was written by Gerard Ralphs, a senior research manager in the HSRC’s Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (CeSTII). He completed his PhD, titled “Innovation measurement and the South African Cultural and Creative Industries”, at the University of Johannesburg in 2025. The author thanks Il-haam Petersen and Sharlene Swartz for sharing information and insights during the development of this article. For more information, please contact Gerard Ralphs at gralphs@hsrc.ac.za. To learn more about the project’s methodological foundations, listen to this HSRC seminar from June 2020.