ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Media, Creative, and Cultural Industries
This article is part of the Research TopicCultural and Creative Industries as Drivers of the EU’s Triple Transition: Needs, Challenges, and Future SkillsView all 3 articles
Institutions Complement Diffusion but Reconfigure Enablers on the Road to Triple Transition: Evidence from Creative Europe Projects
Provisionally accepted
Aliya Turegeldinova1Bakytzhan Amralinova1
Máté Miklós Fodor1*Akerkin Eraliyeva1Chen Dayou2Aidos Joldassov1- 1Satbayev University, Almaty, Kazakhstan
- 2China National Petroleum Corporation, Beijing, China
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European policy promotes a "triple transition", integrating digital innovation, ecological sustainability (green policy goals), and social inclusion in development initiatives. Creative industries can be pivotal in this process, given their societal role beyond the production of products and services and their ability to shape responses to ubiquitous challenges. The objective of this study is examining how institutional mandates interact with organic innovation dynamics in the creative industries regarding the simultaneous integration of all three policy pillars in policy-funded projects. We use data on 5,601 initiatives from the EU's Creative Europe program (2013-2025) as a natural experiment. As of 2021, Creative Europe's calls for proposals have begun suggesting the inclusion of all three pillars of the triple transition in funded projects. This policy shift enables the comparison of pre-and post-mandate trends. Results reveal an intrinsic upward trajectory in projects with simultaneous digital, green and social goals (i.e. 'triple-pillar' projects), even before the shift. This pattern persisted after 2021 as well. However, the mandate substituted for other catalysts like international collaboration. Pre-2021, multi-country partnerships significantly predicted triple-focus within projects. Post-2021 however, this link vanished as even local projects complied with Creative Europe's suggestions. Instead, larger project budgets and grants emerged as key enablers, indicating a trade-off in cost efficiency. Mandated comprehensiveness required greater resources for implementation. Our findings therefore indicate that policy can encourage organic initiative emerging from project participants themselves. However, it reshapes processes, potentially burdening smaller actors. To maximise policy impact, mandates should pair with funding support and flexibility.
Keywords: Creative Europe, Creative industries, Triple transition, digital transformation, Environmental sustainability, social inclusion, international collaboration, Project funding
Received: 22 Oct 2025; Accepted: 03 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Turegeldinova, Amralinova, Fodor, Eraliyeva, Dayou and Joldassov. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Máté Miklós Fodor, m.fodor@satbayev.university
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