Design Innovation for creative growth: Modelling relational exchange to support and evaluate creative enterprise in the Scottish Highlands and Islands

This article examines the development and delivery of a Creative Growth Model as part of a programme of Design Innovation activities with creative micro-enterprises and support organizations in the Highlands and Islands region of Scotland. There is a growing body of critique for how creative enterprise is framed, supported and evaluated in relation to economic notions of value and growth that struggle to incorporate the sociocultural interests and activities of sole traders and micro-enterprises. This article presents a Design Innovation approach for identifying situated conceptions of value, modelled as emergent value constellations, based on the diverse interactions and relational exchanges prevalent within the creative enterprise. This research draws predominantly on the work of Design Innovation for New Growth (DING), a two-year AHRC follow-on funded project between 2017 and 2019, which engaged with existing creative expertise in the Highlands and Northern Isles of Scotland to mobilize local practitioners as central drivers of innovation. The article aims to contribute to co-design literature seeking to develop ‘design practices that understand how value is co-produced, […] understood, generated, and employed’ (Whitham et al. 2019: 2) in conjunction with creative enterprises.