Digitisation of Cultural Heritage and Business Model Innovation: The Case of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence

Luciana Lazzeretti, Andrea Sartori

Abstract


Recently, digitization has attracted increasing interest not only in museology and computer science, but also in economics and managerial literature. Scholars have tried to analyse how technological innovation is reshaping the role and mission of museums as producers and distributors of cultural content and investigate the new business model that emerges. The present work aims to investigate the adoption of ICT and innovation processes in museums, and their interaction dynamics between curators and technology developers. We analyse an Italian successful museum case study, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, where digitization has been developed through a long-term partnership among the local University, a creative ICT enterprise and other technical partners. Data collection integrates some semi-structured interviews with information from websites, documents, publications, and the museum’s institutional communication. The main results show that this case can be defined as a Virtual Value Chain Model according to a curatorial approach at European level.

Reecentemente, la digitalizzazione ha attratto un interesse crescente non solo nelle discipline museologiche e informatiche, ma anche nella letteratura economica e manageriale. Gli studiosi hanno provato ad analizzare quanto  l’innovazione tecnologica stia ridisegnando il ruolo e la mission dei musei come produttori e distributori di contenuti culturali, analizzando nel contempo  i nuovi modelli imprenditoriali che emergono. Questo contributo intende investigare l’adozione delle tecnologie dell’informazione e di nuovi processi nei musei, e le dinamiche di interazione tra curatori e sviluppatori di tecnologie. Si analizza un caso di successo italiano, la galleria degli Uffizi di Firenze, dove la digitalizzazione è stata sviluppata nell’ambito di una lunga collaborazione con la locale Università, un’impresa creativa e altri partner tecnici. La raccolta di dati integra le interviste semi-strutturate con le informazioni dai siti web, documenti, pubblicazioni e la comunicazione istituzionale del museo. I principali risultati mostrano come questo caso possa essere definito come un modello di catena virtuale del valore secondo un approccio curatoriale a livello europeo.


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.13138/2039-2362/1436

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