Case Studies: Information Industry Innovators
The digital content industry is made up of members that represent a broad spectrum of publishers. This session focused on innovative companies that have made “game changing” moves. This includes tackling new business models, transferring best practices from B2B to B2C or even implementing new technologies.
Moderator: Lisa Bodell, CEO, futurethink
Panelists:
Jim Brock,CEO and Co-founder, Attributor
Steve Goldstein, Chairman and CEO, Alacra
Darrell W. Gunter, Executive Vice President/CMO, Collexis Holdings, Inc.ein
[A little challenged with technology in the short transition to this panel, apologies to early speakers]
Brock: We harvest and help publishers to turn lemons into lemonade
Goldstein: We package and focus on customers
Gunter: Can show key concepts on a topic, shine a bright light on topics such as science, can show seconds who’s the experts in your field. Also provide hypothesis generation. Make scientists happy, improve their critical path.
Bodell: How to make innovation happen.
Goldstein: Many publishing have enormous assets and they don’t apply innovation to the raw materials. We have something that’s worth x, how can we make it 2x or 3x.
Brock: Blogs and mashups are laboratories, you can understand how to do it in your own organization. We’ll tell you which articles got the most play in the blogosphere.
Gunter: Researchers set up a coffee shop, we can show you in ten seconds who’s really connecting with one another.
Bodell: How you can add value to content?
Brock: Thinks may be copied, if it’s not linked to where you want it to go it doesn’t have value [comment: key concept - hearkening back to Google presentation, copyright is really about controlling behavior].
Gunter: STM publishers have all this data, Elsevier putting reference works online, 10 billion industry, how do we extract value? A window of science, shows you what you know and what you don’t know.
Bodell: How do you get aha moments?
Goldstein: We listen to customers, not necessarily an immediate thing, takes some synthesis.
Bodell: In our business it’s a series of aha moments, with billions of things happening over and over again in algorithms, things can add up to a P&L, but engineers can see opportunities to reduce unit costs. A series of aha moments.
Gunter: When the customer confirms the aha moment is key. Some customers have great blogs, will let us know when we’re on track.
Brock: Customers say “we did this with it,” gives you great ideas.
Goldstein: Web 2.0 Summit useful, problem isn’t ideas but how to make ideas real. Could be too much resource or a distraction.
Bodell: Which ideas to you execute upon?
Brock: We’re a small company, usually it’s a vetting and prioritizing and re-prioritizing process. Sometimes something interesting comes up you have to figure out how to slot it in. Have to trust your instinct and the instinct of the team.
Goldstein: Give summer interns an opportunity, industry wiki lead to internal wiki, site redesign, blog recaps. Trial and error with low investment.
Bodell: How do you do innovate?
Gunter: Simple things can be great things, deciding to do it could be the biggest step.
Goldstein: Know it when you see it, you see an opportunity for something marketable. How are you going to solve particular problems.
Brock: In team meeting saw that we need to recognize innovation, has to be a non-obvious way to do something new, could be a process, administrative.
Bodell: You get a great idea, how do you get it out the door?
Gunter: Need budget and stakes in the ground, set expectations, need design group to work with you to make sure that you’re on track.
Brock: People and machines, leave facilities in the budget, leave unstructured time.
Bodell: Not easy to get people to be innovative, how do you get people to take risks?
Goldstein: Get as many employees out of the office to customers, trade shows and conferences.
Gunter: Main problem is to find which of the many ideas are the best ideas, opposite problem
Brock: Bring on people who have passion for the non-obvious problem
Goldstein: Be flexible, maybe Google’s 20 percent rule is hard to emulate, don’t look over shoulders too much, encourage people to learn on the job.
Bodell: Part of innovation is failure, what failures helped you?
Gunter: Early at Elsevier, tried to apply process from Wall Street to academic marketplace, fell on deaf ears, audience had other concerns on their minds. Had to understand traditional issues first and was successful afterwards, moving from one industry to another you have to adapt to new expectations.
Brock: Sometimes processes fail or are inefficient, learn from it. Hope that employees know that he’s OK with failures, great employees always want to succeed the first time.
Bodell: Mindsets in innovators? How do you hire?
Brock: Ability to think of things in different ways.
Gunter: Someone well-read in the industry you’re in.
Bodell: Emulative companies?
Goldstein: Twitter as smaller blogs, Facebook as MySpace for college kids.
Brock: LinkedIn, every few weeks there’s some new ways to do things.
Gunter: Biomedexperts.com new site, life scientists are using it.
QUICK TAKE: Good panel, a great reminder that innovation can thrive in many publishing environments, it’s not all about Silicon Valley but applying their lessons and the tried and true lessons - speak to your customers is Steve Goldstein’s mantra, and it’s an important one - is possible in any content company.
- John Blossom, Shore Communications
The Information Industry Summit is the digital information industry’s flagship conference. It provides strategic guidance to senior business leaders representing publishers, content technology companies, bankers, analysts and press.
Jason Kichline is ScribeMedia's project manager and producer of ScribeMedia's Emmy Award winning series Reporting AIDS. He likes typos, fast food and MacGyver like solutions to life's nagging problems.
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