The case for innovation
Sometimes things are all about timing. The last two days I’ve come across four things that I needed to read and the very moment they came around.
They all have to do with innovation, taking risks and breaking down barriers. Engaging in those and taking a critical look at the tasks I’ve been doing, has given me some of the fire back that has been absent for awhile, so I felt a need to share. Here goes:
The first is a video from the folks at CoPress called A Case for Innovation. Simple, to the point and right on.
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/6172232]
The second is a post by Dan Pacheco on how fear, brand addiction and paranoia block innovation. This struck with me because breaking down these and other barriers is going to lead to some really cool stuff.
Just to be clear, I’m not opposed to building and growing existing brands, but in today’s fragmented world I think that “one size fits all” brands have limited appeal. My advice to mature information companies is to think of their brands as “wrappers” for capabilities and expertise. They deliver solutions to customers. But every audience prefers different packaging, so if you use the same brand for everything you end up polluting their potential.
The third is a very clear set of tasks that can be done to create a ecosystem of local knowledge. It comes from Chuck Peters in a post called Focus on Essential New Tasks.
It is a collaborative blueprint for fundamentally changing the way media companies collect content, engage audiences and new voices, disseminate information and work more closely with communities they serve.
We need to create content in the first instance with a new mindset, both those content creators we employ full time, and contracted or freelance community content creators. All content creators need to have a primary emotional bond with their content and audience, not a product or company.
This content creation needs to take place in a new infrastructure which allows atomization and tagging at the simplest elemental level. Today we are stuck with locked-down story and advertising publishing systems, and a bewildering array of blogs, tweets and social space entries.
The fourth comes from Neil Perkin and his Only Dead Fish blog. If you’ve never come across him, take the time. It’s worth it.
He recently wrote a post about the power of incomplete ideas, which to me speaks directly to the way innovation often happens.
As Matthew May says in the introduction to his lovely manifesto on the subject (HT to Johnnie Moore for the link): “Conventional wisdom says that to be successful, an idea must be concrete, complete, and certain. But what if that’s wrong? What if the most elegant, most imaginative, most engaging ideas are none of those things?”. Matthew goes on to make a brilliant point about this, that it is the “unusually simple yet thoughtful construction of what is there” that gives the missing piece its surprising power. Rather like Itay Talgam’s ‘Doing By Not Doing’ (if you haven’t seen that talk yet, watch it. It’s worth it).
I am a media junkie and love the idea of forging ahead and breaking down barriers to lead to new success stories in this industry. I take these four items as a call to action.
Jason -
Those incomplete ideas are such a bother, but they have to be worked through to make progress. Thanks for highlighting their value.
Chuck
Nice post J.
The biggest question I continue to have is how do we loosen the death grip the traditional media teams have on their brand.
We are truly in a position for everyone to prosper by the collective sums of the whole. Although the amount of control and “ownership” may be less than it was before – the total result will be greater.
Keep up the awesome work Jason, I’ll try to hold up my end of the deal from my side!
I love it. I am all for incomplete ideas, but I want to throw out some additional thoughts on the importance of doing the parts that we do know, and doing them well.
In my opinion, moving forward with an incomplete idea is different that moving forward with something that is incomplete (functionality, capability, etc.). Take the parts you do know, and make them great. The rest will form over time and follow.
Also, in my experience, having an idea of the goal/objective you are trying to obtain helps to speed the completion of the incomplete.
Looking forward to the future.
Moving forward with that methodology is a very comfortable way to go.
But by “Take the parts you do know, and make them great. The rest will form over time and follow.” yo will never grow and continue to do everything you’ve always done.
At some point you have to try something different. Take a risk. Try something new.
By being transparent with the audience, telling them this is a test and we need their help…you open yourself up for a collective and collaborative environment.
This is a great conversation – let’s keep it going!
My take on Sarah’s comment is that trying new things in an evolving idea stream, or “moving forward with an incomplete idea”, such as user engagement, revenue generators, etc. is different (and much better) than moving forward with something that’s incomplete (as in making something live that isn’t fully functional). Sarah – am I interpreting you correctly?
When is anything ever “complete” in this new ecosystem? I think its a bunch of moving parts, some parts work and some don’t. Parts can be replaced, improved, dumped, added – but the train keeps moving, always moving. You don’t know til you try, but you better know when you do try.
Transparency is HUGE.
The commenting on GO is pretty healthy for a publication this size, is anything being done with that information?
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