The innovative and strategic models of creative industries (CIs) in the digital economy are capturing an ever increasing interest in recent years. Notwithstanding, most of the literature is dealing with creation and talent and very few with technological and innovation perspectives. Innovation is in general considered from a single viewpoint: a means to develop new creative contents. Thus, this paper investigates a very important issue surprisingly neglected both in the scientific literature and the professional and public reports as well: the topic of R&D and technological innovations in CIs. The present paper characterizes how and where R&D takes place in a specific creative industry: the book publishing sector. A systematic identification of R&D developments concerning e-book technology has been achieved using an original methodology set up by the authors to feature the technological strategic evolutions. The results provide a reliable cartography of the value chain through an adaptation of the OSI layers model. This framework helps to understand the new digital ecosystem of the book publishing sector and the strategies carried out by editorial houses regarding R&D and new technological innovations.
