Live from Delphi - Innovation at the intersection of media and technology

I am attending the Delphi Business and Process Innovation Summit this week and blogging as I go. Next up was David Eckoff on "Innovation at the intersection of media and technology". This was a fairly humorous session for various reasons, not least that it was the end of the day and so everyone was a little punchy.

Media industry used to have very limited choices in terms of TV channels, movies only at movie theaters etc. Very homogeneous but not any more. Now many more kinds of channels, time-shifting with TIVO-like devices, place-shifting with Slingbox and so on. Fragmentation and choice are king and disruptive innovation is now a way of life in the media industry. Consumers are now creating content too - at concerts for example, people post photos, commentary etc. Lots of new deals and gadgets make for constant churn. Turner, David's employer, is trying to innovate in this environment. For example the new site, veryfunnyads.com, a place to see funny ads and email it around to people. Very consumer-driven, very viral. He showed a couple and some were very funny (like the March of the Penguins one from France). They make money from advertising around the advertising :-). Similarly a PPV service for minority sports PlayOn used by the Atlantic Conference for college sports. Key innovation by Turner was to provide a production kit (based on CNN field crews) for producing these TV shows cheaply and easily. Each school has one, they have interns working this! Completely handed over to rights holder so they can produce it themselves.

10 lessons learned about innovation at Turner:

Innovate when you have a healthy core - as have money, opportunity for focus etc.
Perfection is the enemy of innovation - good enough where it has to be, better where it can be
Traditional metrics aren't helpful for analysis of markets that don't yet exist - very true!
Innovation is a process
Different resources and approaches for defending the castle vs exploring new territory
Be seen as an ally - relationships matter
Get some early wins
Rome wasn't built in a day
If you want to beat Bobby Fisher, don't play chess! - don't tackle big enemies in their area of strength
Survival of the most adaptable

There was a lot of discussion about blogging so "hello" to everyone from the session! David's blog is www.davideckoff.com. That's it for today, I am speaking tomorrow.

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