Redefining innovation at iFestival and Nott Tuesday

Innovation has been the big buzzword of this decade – apparently, start-ups to international corporations will thrive or fail based on how much they innovate – yet in another decade this activity might just have been called ‘enterprise’, ‘doing stuff’ or ‘trial and error’.   However, from my own research into disruptive innovation in the creative industries (due to be published by NESTA in May), I uncovered a wealth of people doing and thinking differently about how they framed – and later reframed – their business offer in the market through new business or production models. Perhaps this is what Schumpeter called “creative destruction” and reinvention rather than innovation – which is perhaps a too broad and yet too narrow term.

iFestival

Yet Regional Development Agencies love their innovation – with whole teams and programmes dedicated to the intangible verb.  Yesterday I went to East Midlands Development Agency (EMDA)’s iFestival – a celebration of ideas and inspiration from the region and a few bigger ideas too.

I tagged along to the second half and heard Luke Johnson, Chair of Channel 4, talk about his legacy as a food entrepreneur (Pizza Express, Strada and Giraffe to name but three) – and avoiding mentioned the inevitable  impending collapse and inter-broadcaster bunfights between C4 and others.  Johnson believed his success lay in taking the core roots of a succeeding entrepreneur and developing these into a corporate model of chains and franchises – entrepreneurs just got too bored after opening a few stores.

There was much talk from Johnson and the panel on the importance of youth and education – most innovators generated their great ideas in their 20s, when they will take risks (and have little to lose).  There was worry that too much reliance on age could see Britain like Japan – where conservative 50-somethings rule roost and resist change or new ideas.   Those who won’t take risks have low expectation and live in fear of the unexpected – and nowadays, the unexpected is almost to be expected.

What happened next almost defied belief; delegates were invited into a medieval street – resplete with musicians, a juggler (trading under the name ‘the Fluid Druid’, apparently) wenches and people dressed as giant emus (not sure why) – to enter the ‘Last Business Standing’ competition where businesses were encouraged to – over the din – compete to deliver the best pitch to the streets filled with regional business advisors.

From my own days working in the public sector, it’s easy to knock their efforts at doing something different (dare I say innovative) – but this event was odd, inducing smirks and giggles, but definitely memorable – though not necessarily for all the right reasons.  The discomfort from the black-suited middle age gents, mainly from traditional industries like manufacturing, and the incongrous medieval fayre to me ranks alongside the very bizarre snake dancers entertainment at Creative Clusters 2007 as one of those moments of unadulterated perplexion.

Nott Tuesday

Head somewhat fried, it was reassuring to head over in the evening to the second meeting of Nott Tuesday, the new network of high-tech and digital businesses, to hear two interesting speakers, Doug Ashby, IT business entrepreneur discussed “retirement at 45, heaven or hell?”.  If you were a small business owner into the number crunching of boom, bust, boom, boom zero to hero startup his account of the trials and errors of IT startup was no doubt interesting.

Ian Lockwood then gave a quick introduction to the Nottingham Fibre project, as a call to arms for Lace Market tech co’s to unite in the fight for faster broadband.  I’ve blogged about this project recently under its previous name, Ultraband.

The quality of chat this evening was undoubtedly higher and more innovative than at iFestival where I seemed to get emeshed in a very boring gentlemen’s musings on innovation in hole digging technologies for fibre optics companies.  Great chat with the ever idea-ful CJ from PCM Creative who intends to set up Nottingham’s first Media Camp in the spring – I hope to get on board with making that happen.

And Martin Wright who is hosting Nottingham’s first web 2.0 surgery on March 26th – a way of getting businesses and organisation to get some hands on help on “getting” all this complex web stuff (something the great social media tribe in Birmingham have been pioneering for a while) – and ditto I’ve signed up as an expert for that so hope to see some Notts folk there.

I was revived by the energy and ideas in the room and willingness to get on and do and make change;  it really seems tha now is the hour  for Nottingham businesses to get connected, linked in, and use social media to change the business and community landscape for the better – and now its needed more than ever.

So all this innovation seemed to be happily happening of its own accord, without a label, or if it did have one, it would probably read “people talking about interesting stuff and getting on and doing it” – which is the closed definition of innovation you’re likely to find.

Onemedia unconference Nov 13-14, London

Onemedia logo

This week I headed down to innovation quango NESTA’s space age HQ (resplete with break-out rooms with circular board tables) to join in the first Onemedia ‘unconference‘.  This was basically an open space workshop where the 50 or so participants from a range of media industries – including web, digital, music, film, education and TV – gathered together to set our own agenda and form break-out groups to discuss the hot topics of the day and form our own solutions.  The attendees were a jolly nice bunch, mainly indie producers and consultants with a few biggers orgs like ITV represented.

I’ve been to several open space conferences, particularly during my days in Bristol developing projects with Watershed Media Centre.  Although you don’t always feel like you get the ‘top down’ knowledge you would from a speaker-led symposium conference, it really allows you to contribute and benefit from the wealth of knowledge of others – paticularly those working in parallel or complimentary fields, and it’s a cheaper and more accessible ways of organising an industry event – particularly in a smaller town or city.

And the best thing about open space is that it works on the ‘law of two feet’:  it’s OK to walk away from a session if you’ve said enough or just want to move on.  It’s a great way to get live feedback to test the waters with radical ideas.  But I forgot how tiring it is – so much talking and even more listening!

We self-secretariat-ed all our session – Mel @ Media Sauce has the un-enviably task of gathering and sorting through all our disparate notes – but some of the key thoughts and ideas I heard in the sessions I attended:

Branded and advertiser-funded content
There was much discussion from the indie production community on the return, 1950s soap-style, to the advertiser leading the production of quality content, from interactive drama through to James Bond heavy rotation product placement.  Many discussed the difficult of getting air-time with the major brands; without the gatekeepers that were broadcasting commissioners, the environment to get commissioned direct is impossible to navigate for the micro-indie, and in the case of the telecos, we need them more than they need us.  Another example of the ‘flatter’ media landscape being easier to cross the terrain for big players than the many small, yet Magic Lantern played upon the creative vanity and budget crunches of brand managers to deliver interactive content direct to online audiences, cutting out the perplexing range of ‘middle men’ in the current advertising market including buyers, ad agencies and producers.   Those established in the ‘old media world’, like Buffy creator Joss Wheedon’s Doctor Horrible or Radiohead’s In Rainbows, mean reaching existing fans with the benefit of years of TV or major record label investment is that much easier to profit from digital-only distribution and to acquire the investment in the first place.

Taste makers
Conversely, there is a key role for ‘taste makers’ like Last.fm and Hype Machine to help users connect with the influencers – be it Nike bribing cool kids to wear their trainers in the playground, or user recommendation and aggreation technologies.

Narrative
Understanding narrative was a key theme in several sessions – web producers need to understand narrative in the user experience journey as much as the many types of narrative forms which can be applicable to everything from a traditional storytellers to a console game.  The digital world has much it can learn from those from the film and TV industries – be it how to tell compelling stories on a budget or lighting design.

Universities may be churning out graduates with interactive productions skills ten-to-the-dozen, but those with the intelligence to be trained in the ‘art’ of media production, or the work training to do it, are lacking, yet a lot of the old training from the film schools isn’t needed in the YouTube and digi-camera age where accessibility and story are more important than framing each shot.  Budding film-makers can just learn by doing, and start to engage with an audience from day 1.

New skills
Training and skills are paramount to allow people to compete in this shifting landscape – but the significant majority of freelancers in the industry don’t have access to professional development – or even know the question to ask they need the answers for.  The project I am working on with White Room for North West Vision is an interesting take – getting ‘traditional media’ freelancers and getting them placed into digital companies in a unique cross-industry experiment.

Writers, producers and directors still largely ‘don’t get it’ when it comes to creating the cross-platform worlds where audience expectations, aggregated by social media, are either enhanced or dumfounded by writers and the opportunities and limitations of each medium are best exploited.

Collaboration
Collaboration between different writers, producers and technical geeks is a necessity in the cross-platform world – and we just aren’t used to getting stuck in together or finding shared languages and commonalities.

Digital distribution
Overall, getting paid and finding the right business models from digital distribution is the crucial hurdle which inhibit development with the professional media community – although there is a necessity for new talent to ‘just f***ing do it’ – prototype your idea, get in online and start to build an audiences rather than chasing the golden commission.

I facilitated an interesting session on digital music distribution and what lessons other industries could learn from the bit-torrented collapse of the conventional music business.  Some key findings were that bands and artists have been successful when engaging with their audiences through making it very personal – using social media – like video, blogs and giving a bit of it away for free – were seen as winning tactics for musicians to build direct relationships and acquiring the data of fans which everyone from film-makers to indie games developer could benefit from.

We concluded the old structures – major labels, distributors and retailers – were largely redundant, but have been replaced with other corporate funded spaces like MySpace and Last.fm who act as gatekeepers and curators between content creators and audiences.

Overall, it was an enjoyable event if not a tad long – an intensive, bigger one-day event would I think have worked better.  It was a great way to meet people from different disciplines with granularity, but the wealth of indies/consultants compared to brand owners and major media players probably limited the impact of change the conference set out to make.  Sponsors NESTA and Pact are interested in the findings so let’s see what next.

I’m looking for disruptive innovators in creative businesses

I’m currently working on a fascinating project with Inspiral for inward-investment agency Creative Sheffield to look at disruptive business models and how creative and digital businesses in Sheffield, who are growing faster than any other industry sector there, can benefit from thinking around disruptive innovation.

So what the hell are disruptive business models?

Defined by Harvard Professor Clayton Chistensen in his 1995 in his book The Innovator’s Dilemma, ‘disruptive technology‘ was a term used to describe how new technology can radically affect the market of existing business.  Think how much the iPod has changed the CD industry through popularising MP3s, or mobile storage USB sticks has changed the hard drive and disc industry.  Disruptive innovation is also known as discontinous innovation.

According to guru disruptive innovation consultants Innosight:

“disruptive innovations either create new markets or reshape existing markets by delivering relatively simple, convenient, low-cost innovations to a set of customers whose jobs-to-be-done are ignored by industry leaders.”

More specifically, disruptive business models, are how restructuring the way we do business can create a new market – particularly in low-cost, flexible, and online based businesses who can produce ‘just good enough’ services to suck in those who wouldn’t otherwise participate.  And the ‘hidden’ market for a business service is potentially massive. For example: the growth in low-cost, no-frills airlines for those who just want to get there, Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets for those who just don’t need Microsoft’s powerful Excel, or Zara’s quick from catwalk to shop designs for those who want their fashion fix quick.

In short: disruptive innovation is all about changing the business world, albeit maybe only a tiny bit of that world.  It could be a piece of video presentation software that cuts out the low value corporate video market.  It could be a service like Etsy that enables local designer-makers to connect and sell to the world.

Are you a disruptive innovator in the creative and digital industries?

I’m really excited about this project because its:

1) Probably the first time that research on this topic has been focused on small instead of corporate businesses.
2) Almost certainly the first time disruptive innovation has been applied to the creative sector.

I’m looking for case studies of creative and digital businesses who could broadly fit the label of ‘disruptive innovators‘.  Perhaps they are in software, fashion, music, web development, film or computer games.  I’d ideally like to establish contact with UK creative businesses.  But if you’re a creative business outside the UK, I’d like to know what you’re doing too, and if you’re a UK small business doing something really interesting outside of the creative sector that could be cool too.  Social enterprises also may bring something interesting to the mix.

Its not just a dust-gatherer piece of research: case studies will go into a downloadable brochure and blog website, plus there may be some publicity and stuff associated with the launch.

Any suggestions for your business or people you know?  Please email me at: Susi O’Neill: susi@digitalconsultant.co.uk

Or post your suggestions and a website in the comments below.  Look forward to hearing your ideas!