The creative economy, digital disruption and collaborative innovation in China

China’s cultural and creative industries were, and to some extent remain, predicated on material culture, illustrated by the rollout of hundreds of cultural parks and creative clusters. The emphasis within the 13th Five-year Plan is for a digitally connected China. Associated with this is the concept of collaborative innovation. In this chapter the authors question if collaborative innovation will deliver the scale of benefits that the industrial economy has achieved. Certainly, the emphasis on collaboration, efficiency and knowledge is a different blueprint than the industrial clusters of the previous decade, most of which ended up as real estate projects. The chapter looks at so-called incubators, makerspaces and innovation hubs in Hangzhou and Shenzhen. Noting the presence there of commercial digital companies such as Alibaba and Tencent, the authors look at the potential of these spaces to generate digital disruption, and ultimately innovation.