Closing keynote: Models of innovation and development

How successful are the models of innovation implicitly and explicitly engaged by the media sector? Of the new models of innovation hotly debated across industry and government – from open innovation to co-creation, and inter-disciplinary collaboration to government funding – which have value in the media sector? Beyond this, what are the broader challenges and barriers the media sector faces to realising media futures? Dr Lewis will reflect on these issues based on his experience in the worlds of corporate telecoms and technology start-ups and his research on digital culture.

“For kids, content has become less significant than the network of communication... It is not about the technology. Their lived experience of childhood is what is really driving them to adopt it” Dr Norman Lewis

“Different media meet different needs – an embarrassingly simple point. Understanding underlying motivations and needs is key” Professor Patrick Barwise

Presenter

Dr Norman Lewis, Chief Strategy Officer, Wireless Grids Corporation

Respondents

Sean Phelan, founder, Multimap.com

Professor Patrick Barwise, London Business School

Chair

Rory Cellan-Jones, Technology Correspondent, BBC

Overview

Norman Lewis Whenever we start talking about innovation, we focus upon outcomes and solutions. What we fail to discuss is the far less glamorous challenge of how the problems underlying these innovations were identified, and thus, eventually solved. In today’s short-term, risk-averse business culture, that insists upon predictable outcomes and rates of return on investment in R&D, innovation has become a cultural affectation and an advertising gimmick rather than a reality. If the media industry really wants to innovate, it needs to identify what problems need solving – technically and socially. As access becomes abundant with costs tending towards zero, time and attention are getting scarcer. Existing telco business models based upon metered calls will disappear while the challenge of facilitating intention-based outcomes around communications and content will confront operators and media companies alike. In this unsettlingly unfamiliar landscape, understanding how media consumption has changed, particularly how younger people adopt and use the media as both a means of self-expression and the creation of their own social networks of meaning, becomes critical. These are the spaces within which the future of media innovation will be won or lost. The biggest barrier lies in contemporary culture’s quest for predictability and risk aversion. Which is why we ought to take a sceptical view of the notions that user generated content or ‘open innovation’ paradigms represent the starting point or solutions for future innovation in the Media.

Reports and Commentary

MediaFutures and the Remembrance of Media past by Alan Patrick on the broadstuff Weblog

Preparation

eComm2008: Keynote: Norman Lewis: Personal Infrastructure – Me to the Power of Us [video]

Bookmark for Innovation’s back, but does that change anything?, Simon Caulkin, The Observer, November 26, 2006

Bookmark for 10 Ways to Think about Innovation: What successful young technologists know, Jason Pontin, Tech Review, September 08, 2006

Bookmark for The love-in, The Economist, Oct 11th 2007. The move toward open innovation is beginning to transform entire industries...