Metaverse meets the Experience Industry

The aim of the project is to support Finnish companies, and public policy to 1) set up a roadmap for understanding the fundamentals of technological, creative, tourism and event organizing businesses and their linkages in value creation, 2) build on novel data analysis, examine and boost service innovation showcases within the identified networks and 3) give policy recommendations on how to promote the growth and development of experience industry both at regional and national, physical and virtual levels. We will highlight the key issues for which networks and practices and, possibly, new policy tools must be found to build an operating environment where experience industry and creative economic activities can grow and develop as part of the economy and will develop these networks, practices and policy tools.

The overall research objective is to find ways in which policymaking at regional and national levels can support complex service product creation and thus generate internationally competitive experiences that successfully merge digital with the physical.

The work is carried out in 5 work packages described below.

WP1 Sector mapping

• Objective: Develop understanding of value creation across experience industries
• Task 1.1 Identifying collaborative value creation opportunities across experience industries: We identify value creation network types across experience industries and what are the major avenues for collaborative value creation.
• Task 1.2 Assess the reliability of generative AI-based analysis results in the experience industry setting: We compare the results of various generative AI tools given for the same search strategies together with human observers to test the validity and reliability of AI technologies in such an analysis.

WP2 Experience industry collaboration and co-opetition

• Objective: Understanding what kind of experience industry networks exist among businesses and other stakeholders in Finland
• Task 2.1 Network analysis: Through web-scraping of the websites of the major players in Finland in the experience industry we study the activities and the networks these organizations are a part of.
• Task 2.2 Network typologies: Through stakeholder interviews, we develop the network maps with qualitative data on the nature of collaboration and how the most significant (strongest) collaborations came to be.

WP3 Success of Complex Service Products

• Objective: Identify success factors and reasons for success
• Task 3.1 Identify success measurements: We study and compare what kind of success indicators exist for experience industries from various data sources.
• Task 3.2 Understanding regional differences in the structure of experience industries: We use approaches such as the calculation of location quotients to capture the relative shares of creative industries businesses in an area and, hence, the formation of networks.
• Task 3.3 Comparing network structures and network success: Combining data from T2.2 and T3.1 to illustrate the effect of various network structures on the success of the experience industry.
• Task 3.4 Identifying policy differences: We use desktop research and interviews of policy-makers and business managers to identify policies in different regions in Finland affecting the growth potential of the experience industry.
• Task 3.5 Complex service product development: We conduct a survey to capture the activities of businesses within the identified networks. The focus will be on understanding the required skills and talent (e.g. human capital, skills, combinations, sources, and gaps) and networking (e.g. key collaborators, linkages and value chains within and outside of location also internationally, access to public support) and how they are connected to innovations in complex service product development and digital transformation.

WP4 Never-ending experiences

• Objective: Understand digital transformation in the experience industry and the potential of never-ending experiences as complex service products for Finnish businesses
• Task 4.1 International benchmarking: The aim of benchmarking is to identify public actor support mechanisms in the top never-ending experience case studies and to study how Finnish experience industry companies can benefit from the best practices developed in those countries. We examine what is the state-of-the-art in never-ending experiences globally.
• Task 4.2 Case studies, interviews and co-creative workshops: The key aspects of the case studies will be related to the interaction between national data platforms, policy instruments, regional operators and the network stakeholders, and factors related to value-chain/cluster/ecosystem development. The study includes from three to five case studies in Finland.

WP5 Policy Innovation and Outreach

• Objective: Develop a roadmap for value creation in the experience industry in the metaverse and KPI’s and indicators to follow this development
• Task 5.1 Roadmap (success factors of the experience industry): Describe the success factors of the experience economy (incl. roles of key players, ecosystem governance models, and other tools (also critical factors on integrating/merging metaverse as an opportunity to EI) and propose for measures to promote the experience industry development. This is enhanced with the forward-looking metrics about the experience industry development from the Task 5.2.
• Task 5.2 KPI and indicator development: As the Experience Industries continue to evolve, it is important to understand how new innovations and businesses impact its development. As such, we consider both retrospective and forward-looking metrics.
• Task 5.3 Infographic and data visualization (PowerBI)
• Task 5.4 Policy briefs and dissemination: Work packages 1 – 5 produce each a Policy Brief.
• Task 5.5 Project management