The Fusion Effect: The economic returns to combining arts and science skills

The report found that 'fused’ companies, those that combine art and science skills in their workforce:

•     Show 8% higher sales growth than science-only firms.
•     Are 2% more likely to bring radical innovations to market.
•     Employ approximately 3.5 million people - despite accounting for around a tenth of UK companies, they employ roughly a fifth of all workers.

The authors of this report used official data to analyse the contribution of employees’ science and arts skills to the performance of their companies between 2010 and 2012. The research comes at a time when the government is promoting STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) rather than STEAM - with the addition of Arts - in spite of a burgeoning creative economy. More...