If you missed the post – A call for leadership: Newspaper execs deserve the blame for not changing the culture – by Jonathan Groves and Carrie Brown-Smith go read it.

I’m not interested in blame or arguing over this or that from the past. I don’t think the authors are either. More than anything, can we agree that these two paragraphs are reality?

“In our research of news organizations, in study after study, we have repeatedly found this to be the case. One daily newspaper of less than 50,000 circulation we studied struggled with the change to a web-first organization because, though its leaders acknowledged the importance of the new medium, they did not reinforce that desire through their reward and accountability systems. Print revenue and circulation remained the benchmarks of success, not digital revenue or pageviews. As a result, newsroom staffers struggled to develop the kind of online content needed to expand the web audience.

“Another paper we studied, a metropolitan daily with a circulation of over 100,000, faced similar challenges, as staffers still celebrated getting on 1A and daily rituals like news meetings continued to be print-focused — despite lots of talk about ‘digital first.’” – Groves and Brown-Smith

If that is the reality, and I know in general it is, how do we change it? What actions do we take today. I believe changing actions and routines will change mindsets.

The authors offer these steps:

- Find the change agents with the relationship-building skills to push others to develop new routines
- Put the structure in place to allow employees to experiment and fail in the digital ecosystem
- Give specific information on prioritizing workloads around digital efforts
- Develop concrete reward systems

Here are a few of my own:

- Base every decision on operating a digital media businesses first
- Define your digital workflow and then organize your staff to meet its objectives
- Measure and listen to everything so you can rapidly adapt to changes in the media market and audience consumption
- Engage with everyone willing to talk or already talking about your product and/or service

As the first quarter winds down and organizations have already adapted for sustainability in 2012, the focus at all levels of the business must now turn to profitability and survivability in 2013 based on the known economic uncertainties.

Rather than debate the meaning of digital first and why we’re still asking that question today, what will organizations – especially media – do in the next nine months so more doors aren’t closed come 2013?

Here is my two-step approach:

The business becomes the ecosystem

Collaboration, experimentation and driving shared value will spur revenue  growth. I use Dion Hinchcliffe to further my point when he says, “the value is in sustaining dynamic relationships and not fixed transactions.”

I think most understand the fixed way of running the business of a newspaper, TV station, a startup or whatever doesn’t apply any longer and certainly won’t in the near future. The company must be smartly connected to customers, users, partners and its employees via digital ecosystems to create networked impact.

“Being able to elicit the network (Internet, community, shared data, whatever) to maximum effect to fuel and grow your ecosystem is thus the core competency of the digital era,” Hinchcliffe says.

Shift resources to meet the new digital strategy

Defining a digital strategy seems to be a daunting task. General guidance around the business objectives of an organization with a keen sense of audience metrics may be enough.

Using Hinchcliffe again to spur conversation, he offers a 34-point list of elements to organize the digital strategy around. It includes some of the initiatives already underway including e-commerce, mobile operations, video and content management.

Ultimately, it will be up to each individual organization to determine the viability of each of those elements. But, if nothing else, start with some and shift resources now to build a more sustainable digital businesses before the window of opportunity closes.

The Swerve - Ever wonder how the modern world came to know On The Nature of Things by Lucretius? This book, by Stephen Greenblatt, details the fascinating story in a narrative I couldn’t put down.

The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan - The story that brought down a general. The detailed account of the inner workings and politics or a U.S. Army general fighting the war in Afghanistan.

Enemies: A History of the FBI – The detail provided by recently declassified papers in this account of the FBI is somewhat frightening and encouraging all in one. If you read it, I think you’ll understand that.

Polemics – A hard read for me but eye-opening. A french philosopher reveals in great detail his thoughts on modern politics. I don’t always agree with his take but it has spurred me to think differently. For example: “We have the riots we deserve. A state in which what is called public order is only a coupling of the protection of private wealth and dogs unleashed on children of working people and people of foreign origin is purely and simply despicable.”

The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy

It’s not a big deal, but I was interested to hear Tom Chapman speak in Cedar Rapids on the “humanization of entrepreneurship” and wearing a shirt and tie just seemed wrong . I don’t know many entrepreneurial minds that wear ties. That’s for the VCs.

Chapman is the director of entrepreneurship and innovation for the Omaha Chamber of Commerce. He was in Cedar Rapids as part of a two-day event organized by Amanda Styron and Andy Stoll, most recently the co-founders of Seed Here.

During his talk, he stressed three traits a community can utilize to create a vibrant entrepreneurial landscape: Friendship, humility and being less humble.

• Friendship – Create a vast network of connected people so when opportunities arise there is a trusted relationship already established.
• Humility – Be part of many things and take and give credit where it’s most due.
• Be less humble – Speak up. People in the Midwest have trouble doing that when good things happen.

His main point, however, was highlighting the importance of people, the individual, in making an entrepreneurial landscape more vibrant.

“I hear it a lot. Innovation is important. Be urgent. Commit to doing it,” he said. Those are just words people speak. “An individual can make a huge difference. Find leaders that are not typical. Let people lead, so you don’t kill the authenticity.”

There are a group of individuals, including myself, organizing an unconference event called BarcampICR. Like Seed Here, a goal is to get creatives and entrepreneurs to share ideas and create a dialogue on current projects that are happening between the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City corridor. It’s a start.

“Be a champions for what you can do for your community and the realness of what it means,” Chapman said.

Some other key points from his talk:

• Grown entrepreneurial teams by getting them talking to one another regularly. Don’t make assumptions about what the current ecosystem looks like.
• Wealth is created organically. In the ecosystem, job creation and investments do their thing, but wealth creation is not a byproduct. It’s created by entrepreneurs.
• Champion what individuals and teams can do for a community.
• Raise the level of the dialogue about entrepreneurs: The people, the hardships, the successes, the daily grind of making things work.

Follow the #boomcow hashtag for more on Chapman’s talk.

Product approach

• Provide a unique experience
• Focus on a strong brand, good performance, good design and provide easy to use services
• Define business objectives
• Be transactional
• Make it fun
  • Gamify local news and information if you can

Audience approach

• Recognize mobile users are task driven and formulate everything around that
• Know what users are doing on mobile devices in the market
• Sharing+Location+Socializing

Mobile content strategy around local news and information

• In general
  • Define what’s in and what’s out. Don’t be everything to everyone.
  • Adhere to the business objectives
• News
  • Daily flow of information for just mobile users
    • You picks
    • Community’s picks
    • Traffic/weather/breaking news
    • Easy submission tools where content goes live immediately
  • Quote of the day with some context
  • Events to go to right now, later today, tomorrow, next week
  • Daily poll
  • Social flow of local news, information and people
• Sports
  • Information unique to mobile users
    • Scores
    • Video highlights
    • Games, player recaps
    • Best of local personalities/bloggers
  • Best sports performance of the week
  • Athletes/games to watch this week
  • Events
  • Social flow of local/national/collegiate sports news, information and people
• Search
  • Local search for things to do right now
  • Local business directory of places to eat, drink or get service right now

Business model

• Location based opportunities based on preferences, behavior
• Coupons
• Deep discounts
• Virtual goods
• Buy photos

Analytics

• Measure the quality of the interactions
• Measure real-world interactions
• Reward influence in real-time

Some links I referenced for this post:

• The Mobile Moment: A content strategy and transactional goals
• How social media can jumpstart your mobile strategy
• Mobile Trends for Marketers, Product Marketers and Product Managers

I think in many firms innovation is the triumph of hope over experience.  Innovation is fraught with risk, so few people are willing to dig deeply into what makes innovation work.  Further, because everyone is so busy, it can be hard to find time to innovate, so while many are called, few actually choose to participate.

The appropriate distribution of innovation work