to Fostering Innovation

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toFostering Innovation
THE SECRETS

• Within an Existing Organization

Dan Pacheco, The Bakersfield Californian
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Bakersfields Successes

• First U.S. newspaper to deploy citizen
  journalism with The Northwest Voice (2004)
• Among first to experiment with free Classifieds
  and social networking (Bakotopia.com, 2005)
• Award-winning print redesign (2006)
• Local niche network approach. Eleven online
  brands, 6 with print editions, since 2004.
• New products generate unique share of 7 local
  audience, 22 advertisers in city of 300,000.
• 30,000 user profiles, 29,000 friend connections,
  1,000 blogs.

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And most recently ...

• Knight News Challenge recipient.
• Printcasting a digital-print hybrid strategy.
  Grows local audience and revenue by giving niche
  print publishing tools to consumers, and
  self-serve print advertising tools to local
  businesses.
• 837,000, two-year project started in June (and
  my full-time job).
• Timeline Alphas betas this Fall, full launch
  in March 2009, extend to five partners in other
  cities in late 2009, fully open source in 2010.
• Learn more at http//www.printcasting.com

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But thats the past

• Much as we hate to admit it, newspapers have a
  culture that is really focused on the past and
  what happened yesterday.
• Our continued existence is all about focusing on
  tomorrow.
• Unfortunately, our office culture often struggles
  with staying current with today, let alone
  defining the future.
• How do we get there?

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First, the Truth

• There are no formulas, no silver bullets, and
  really no secrets. This is an organic process.
• You either embrace change and risk, or you resist
  change and embrace status quo. News industrys
  future depends on change.
• Strive for the former!
• Dont create fertile soil for advice from new
  media columnists who who increasingly journalists
  should jump ship en masse, give the job of
  technology innovation to competitors, and more.
• Example http//tinyurl.com/636wg3

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Innovation Starts With You

• Leadership must expect and support creativity.
• Difficult, because this means less focus on
  supporting existing business.
• But existing businesses are faltering. Keep a
  core team focused on shoring them up. Use
  revenues as your own Venture Capital firm for
  innovations that will be tomorrows core
  businesses.
• Leadership must BELIEVE in the future, and put
  its money where its mouth is.
• Listen to and encourage people who pitch ideas.
  Be a spring board, not a buzz saw.

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Two ways to innovate

• Innovate from within
• Innovate from without

(Hint 2 helps drive 1).
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Innovate From Within (hard)

• Difficult for people who are incented to support
  current business models to prioritize the future.
• Some ideas from star innovators in Bakersfield
  (Mary Lou Fulton, Jen Baldwin, Matt Munoz)
• Listen to crazy, creative ideas communicate
  with staff so that even top-down mandates look
  like grass-roots initiatives (JB)
• Empower cheerleaders in the newsroom to inspire
  change in the newsroom. Without buy-in, you get
  backlash (JB)
• Make innovation everybodys job, but also
  somebodys job. Make it clear that new ideas are
  welcome, but also assign someone to gather and
  evaluate ideas from inside outside (MLF)
• Use competitors, and use competition to your
  advantage. e.g. MySpace and Facebook pages for
  your new products (MM)

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Internal examples

• Newsroom video revolution.
• Totally organic. One year after one video editing
  desk as assigned, 70 of newsroom contributed to
  videos (see Bakersfield.com home page).
• Bakosphere Newsroom decided to use blogs as
  their live content management system.
• Live news updates and conversation with community
  throughout the day. See http//tinyurl.com/55zbzp
• Californian Extra a daily PDF digest of news for
  busy people.
• It didnt survive (good approach, wrong
  audience), but the idea continues in a different
  way with Printcasting.

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Innovate From Without

• Not all ideas will gain traction in core
  organization. Sometimes you need to shelter
  innovators from core product concerns.
• Send them into the desert, or separate them from
  core organization.
• In Bakersfield New Products Group, Mercado
  Nuevo, Printcasting.
• Dont expect instant miracles. Make money on day
  one can sfifle the big future opportunities.
• But do expect long-term vision for revenue
  generation.
• After success, send those people back into the
  core product.
• Encourage tendency of core product teams to
  compete with new products.

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External examples

• Nine totally new brands created in a network of
  11, in addition to Bakersfield.com and
  Tehachapinews.com
• Bakotopia.com
• The Bakomatic social media platform
• Inside Guide business directory
• Personal Inbox and news feed
• Interest Groups
• Printcasting

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Create Innovation Vehicles

• Create transparent process that makes it easy for
  anyone to pitch an idea that grows audience
  revenue in new ways.

• Encourage anyone at any level to pitch ideas.
• Say, If your idea is chosen, you can have a role
  in its implementation.
• Surprise! Most people have an innate
  entreprenurial spirit, but they lack a safe
  framework to let it be seen.
• Validate best ideas with research. Then, get busy!

Market research Score card for
Raisingbakersfield.com
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Make Room for Play

• Creative people learn by playing with new things,
  and it gives them energy that results in more new
  stuff for you.
• e.g. Bakersfields Second Life experiment. Some
  laughed, but it resulted in a renewed
  appreciation for a Personal Inbox
  micro-payments that later surfaced in our social
  media platform, Bakomatic. (And to our surprise,
  it was profitable!)
• The difference between play and competitive
  research is very thin these days.
• Allow staff to casually play with Facebook apps,
  Twitter, Seesmic videos, iPhone apps, etc. If
  jobs get done, what are you worried about?
• Google reserves 10 of everyones time to work on
  projects of personal interest.

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Make Room for Accidents

• July 7 WSJ report on Innovation -- read it!
  (http//tinyurl.com/59stjo)
• Some of the most world-changing innovations in
  history are the result of accidents (e.g.
  discovery of Smallpox vaccine)
• Let creative people jump between projects
  (otherwise, we get bored!)
• Dont call unexpected results failures.
• Encourage pack-rat-like collecting. Stumble
  through your collection periodically.