By Valérie-Inès de La Ville (*)
The latest Panorama of Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) in December 2025, reminds us that the 10 sectors of Cultural and Creative Industries defined by UNESCO (visual arts and heritage, audiovisual, cinema, video games, music, performing arts, book, press, radio and creative advertising) contribute 43.1 billion euros of added value, representing nearly 3% of France’s GDP, an increase of 21% between 2019 and 2024. Recognized as a vector of economic and strategic power, CCIs are a driver of growth and employment and constitute a tool of international soft power. French creation is well positioned in certain industries (video games, audiovisual and music) and results in massive exports. However, due to chronic lack of innovation and investment, France faces an imminent risk of loss of cultural and industrial sovereignty. Indeed, these industries remain fragile as they encompass a wide variety of companies: a few large global groups and a myriad of small businesses rooted in the regions. The performance of CCIs relies on an economy of prototypes or original creations whose valorization requires the exploration of new uses, the mastery of actor networks and complex intellectual property rights chains. A combination of technological innovations (generative AI, digitization of production chains) and ecological challenges (digital sobriety of productions) create situations of disruptive changes destabilizing the foundations of the conditions for exploiting cultural works. Faced cyclically with periods of overproduction and hyper exacerbated competition, French CCI companies must find ways to strengthen their strategic viability.
Facilitating access to R&D, a decisive growth lever
Research in CCIs represents a powerful lever for innovation, industrial transformation, and growth, provided access to it is facilitated for all companies in the sector, regardless of size. While various competitiveness clusters have been structured in recent years in various territories (Cap Digital, We are Creativ, Plaine Image, la Villa Créative d’Avignon, CITIA, Magelis…), significant work remains to be done to federate public and private actors on structuring research themes for the future. The ICCARE research initiative endowed with 25 million euros over 6 years, sets an initial milestone that needs to be reinforced, systematized, and confronted with entrepreneurial realities. It is about pooling R&D efforts, putting researchers from different disciplines (digital arts, humanities and social sciences, computer science, robotics…) directly in contact with the challenges raised by companies’ creation projects. Beyond fundamental research, it is crucial to involve technology transfer centers in this process to accelerate the production and commercialization processes of French productions. Activating support for various regional research initiatives while ensuring their networking at the national level will help capitalize on truly innovative ideas for the benefit of the entire French ecosystem. Only a voluntary articulation of actions by these various private and public research actors will stimulate collaborations between laboratories to support companies in a logic of diversification of their activities, initiation of innovative projects, and risk management.
R&D to bring forth what does not yet exist
Strengthening the competitiveness of the French CCI sector requires renewing forms of creation and cultural intermediation on a technical and symbolic level, while exploring their legal, financial, marketing, and environmental implications. Four axes of reflection seem likely to open up interdisciplinary work horizons: Socialization, Virtualization, Platformization, and Artification. Socialization promoted by CCIs renews cultural sociabilities and relationships between the work, the cultural actor, the territory, and the public. Virtualization involves integrating immersive technological innovations, by nature prototypical, which question industrialization, distribution, and exportation logics. Platformization modifies the distribution chain of works and favors industrialization logics of works by evolving the value brought by the user – contributor & creator – consumer. Artification requalifies new cultural forms to “digital works” and redesigns the identity of the author, critic, viewer, galleries, amateur, or collector.
The USA and China are investing heavily to support innovation in CCIs, which is accelerating and becoming more complex. France may not have comparable financing levers but can mobilize many talents scattered throughout its territory. Some could support a performing R&D pole with the launching of France 2030 funds dedicated to cultural and creative territorial poles to address future challenges. How to develop ethical AI principles that do not degrade the value of creative work, which is highly qualified? What role to attribute to open-source developments to support the network of small and medium-sized enterprises? It is becoming urgent to better coordinate at the national and European levels research efforts on CCIs, closer to the concerns and projects of French entrepreneurs.
(*) Valérie-Inès de La Ville, EM Lyon graduate, doctor of the Université Lyon III, head of the Master’s “Multimedia Management & Licensing” at IAE de Poitiers. She launched the first international Child and Teen Consumption conference in 2004, coordinated the ANR Ludo-Aliment project from 2007 to 2010. Since 2016, she has been directing FABRICC, which becomes the chair “Cultural and Creative Industries in virtual universes” at the Université de Poitiers.
