- Greg

1. Innovation inertia refers to the concept of Clayton Christensen (Disruptive Innovation) and the innovation dilemma. He found out that along a broad range of industries leaders failed to transform their companies due to the efficiency trap (the gatekeepers in Finance, Marketing and Controlling, that want to see their requirements fulfilled before any initative is put forward) He proposes (as you do and I agree as well) to build external small scale units to carve out the opportunities in the niche market, gain cheap experience and THEN up-scale projects.

2. However I disagree with Myth 1; Please read the Boston Consulting Group publications “The CMO Dilemma” and “Innovation Report 2009″ (p. 28) that indicate that most Traditional Media Senior Executives do not feel confident in the field of Digital and Innovation (and CMOs usually have a better understanding of what they want than media agency and trad. media executives). Observing interviews and approaches with IPhone apps of print, radio and TV companies shows us that they did NOT understand what this medium is all about. But what is most triggering to me are the constant failure in developing learning capabilities since all approaches show that these companies could not get rid of their “mass media perspective” that excludes any idea of an honest integration.

I agree with all of your points but , respectfully, I think they address different issues than the post.

The post was about why most traditional media companies do so poorly relative to pure digital companies. They have a huge advantage in that they know how to develop content and manage creative people, but very few actually have competent web divisions.

I agree that the reason that digital spend isn’t higher is because it is unproven beyond direct response. This is a major oversight on the part of digital people who keep harping on about how clients don’t get it, but will come around some day.” Advertisers look for media to fit their brief, they don’t fit their brief to media offers.

Thanks for your comment.

- Greg

Cheers,
Simon

Yes. I’ve heard that it’s been tough for trade titles, unfortunately.

- Greg

The technology trade business was certainly set up for the fall it took after 2000. The .com bubble had pumped up the page count artificially, and at the same time overhead, personell etc. When the .com bubble crashed the technology trade publishing business imploded at the very same time it should have been expanding to meet the new digital opportunities.

By 2000 he trade press had degenerated into a place for technology companies to pump up their stock with continual flow of press releases. Some of our biggest former ad customers, themselves technology businesses, became our biggest competitors when they realized they could distribute press releases themselves on the internet.

Thanks for your comment.

Ironically, the last decade has been great for most of print (except for Newspapers and, it would seem, trade publishing).

Magazine brands with niche audiences can adapt well to the web and advertisers still are willing to invest heavily. Moreover, investing in web is, in truth, not a heavy financial investment. It’s much cheaper to launch a web site than it is to launch a new print brand.

Some tradiitional publishers, like The Atlantic and Conde Nast, understand this and are putting together great print/digital businesses.

- Greg

The earliest reactions were to copy print products in limited capacity to meet reader requests. The industry was still in a defense mode and we debated the so called “death of print” the way scientists debate the next ice age or a comet hitting the earth. Some said it could happen tomorrow, some said it would take fifty years, others said it was so unlikely that we should not spend precious resources until we were certain what was happening.

The allocation of such resources was a major question. Print publishing has been under heavy economic pressure since long before people were talking about digital media. The question was, do we consolidate our position in print, the only model that could produce significant return on investment, or put more of those scarce resources into digital products that were still evolving.

I’ve been there so I know.

One thing that I wouldn’t underestimate is the issue with standards and interfaces. People in traditional media are used to having everything work together very well. In Digital, on the other hand, standards (especially between departments) are almost nonexistent, so people need to work across disciplines much more closely than before.

This is especially true of creative people, who are used to being able to ignore other departments and mostly concentrate on the product, but now have to collaborate with web development, marketing and sales to get the product right.

- Greg