Nieman Foundation at Harvard
Let’s say you’re in an industry that’s facing the prospect of technological disruption. What could you learn from the news business, which has — maybe you noticed — had a rough time of late?
That was a question posed to Raju Narisetti, the senior vice president for strategy at News Corp, and Margaret Sullivan, The New York Times public editor, in an interview with Reuters TV at the recent International Journalism Festival in bucolic Perugia, Italy.
While Sullivan noted that “desperation has been the mother of invention for the newspaper business and the media business in general,” Narisetti said that other industries should not make the same mistakes and only wait to innovate until they’re pushed to the brink:
Hopefully, they won’t make the same mistake the news industry has made, which is to wait until you’re pushed to the wall before you start to innovate. I think the ability to innovate in advance of changes is important for these industries. The other thing is that as an industry, newspapers were never able to attract good business talent. We attracted the best journalism talent. And I think that’s been a big shortcoming as we’ve needed to adapt to business models, and hopefully some of the other industries are learning from that and are gathering their talent in all aspects of their business.
Narisetti also notes, tongue slightly in cheek, what’s stopping something like Blendle to unite all the newspapers in the U.S.: “Unfortunately or fortunately in the U.S., there’s this thing called the Sherman Act which prevents us all from grouping up together and launching one single product.”
Watch the full interview above; Narisetti and Sullivan touch on a few other topics, including paywalls, increased segmentation in the media, and more.
2 comments:
You make a great point, innovation is hard enough without the added pressure of having your “back against the wall.” I am sounding the alarm for CPAs (actually accountants and auditors) which were identified by the Economist magazine of having a 94% probability of disruption in the next two decades due to technology. The same forces that are disrupting the news industry and even the non-profit association industry (yes we are in midst of disruption as I write this). I think the other point is that this trend toward more and faster disruption is likely to continue, signaling the “end of competitive advantage” and the beginning of a time of “transient advantages” as Columbia Business Professor, Rita McGrath posits. Your message is spot on, don’t wait too long before innovating, disruption is all around us.
“Narisetti said that other industries should not make the same mistakes and
only wait to innovate until they’re pushed to the brink…”
I’d go further. Organizations should deploy separate teams to create
proposals for businesses that would disrupt the parent organization.
One of the classical elements of disruption is that the disrupted
organization is usually managed very well. Disruption does not come from
poor leadership or sloppy business practice.
Newrooms have evolved to their current configuation over a long period of
time. They have been finely tuned for efficiency. In bringing about that
efficeincy, the work force has been taught to tow the company line, to do
things as management dictates.
That configuration is not good for innovatiion or invention. Innovation
demands experimentation and an ability to tolerate failure and ambiguity.
Inside the disrupted organization, you will managers bemoaning the idea of
deploying the disruptive techniques that are destroying them. They says
things like “If we do that, it will canabalize our cash cow!” They are
right. Thus the need to deploy outside teams to pull together innovation.
Trackbacks:
Leave a comment