The Innovation Game: How not to innovate and win friends.
Where to start? Being part of the welcome party for Prince Charles and Jay-z in 2008 at Uni from recognition of being an innovator for students (see end of post).
That year I’d up the anti taking my knowledge and awards in building the metaverse, platforms and videojournalism to lecturing. It was pretty rad for its time. It would bring me recognition several times.
No!
What about being told by management at JustGiving.com in 2001, David it’s not working out and we’ll have to let you go. As Editor my ideas weren’t landing. Mind you many people too would be leaving. That’s start ups.
I moved to an outfit re-active next door in Soho which would embrace similar ideas. We’d go onto to become finalists in Channel 4’s Unleash the Talent Inside
No!
Let’s start here then. I’m standing at a lectern in a room inside the US’ most august journalism club, the National Press Club in DC, about to address a room full of journalists and experts.
I’ve just built the UK’s first video news magazine, and one of the few in the world. Names like Heavy.com, F1 Magazine and Hillman Curtis blended art and creative design. I figured news and journalism could do that and more. It was born of necessity, like most of innovation.
In addressing the audience I speak of my first “how not to innovate”. I’ve pretended an army of contributors make up the magazine, from designers, photographers, writers, coders, project managers when in fact it’s just me. The judges laugh. Audiences tend to feel more at ease in a community than following what might come across as the whim of one person.
In 2005, as captured by Apple Inc, I designed a system called the Outernet and forecasted that in years ahead broadband would support streaming into public spaces.
Over the years two more “how not tos” keep reminding me of the likely fate if you get it right. There are many tales of people succeeding by themselves, but they are the exception. Relatively speaking an artist/ talent has a team of people behind them maxing out their exposure and offerings. Twitter, Paypal, Facebook, Linkedin…many people gave birth to these, even if the spotlight continues to fall on one person.
There’s an old adage in politics that goes, you’ve got to win power to make change. In Innovation you have to have power to get your ideas out. That power comes from continual endorsements, press and publicity. Prizes sate the ego, but they don’t necessarily solve your problem for change; I have my fare share of prizes.
When I won first my major award I failed to maximise. I should have had hired PR, but found I couldn’t afford them. I got mentions in the Sunday Times , The Economist, and a great feature in Press Gazette, but it wasn’t sustained. Innovation success is akin to a chimpanzee throwing a dart at a bullseyes. It can be hit and miss.
The other ear worm is this. Innovation is like a drug. Hence it’s easy to become a serial innovator. In effect if you’re a creative then you’re an innovator mixing tech. When I was a kid I used to take apart the TV and Radio to see who these people were inside. I’m liaising with an AI specialist today about how we can solve fake news in real time.
Innovation thrives of publicity, of people knowing, so you the innovator earn the space and time to build upon ideas. Press, mags etc are one facet for this. An editor needs to be cognisant of an innovator’ reach for its readers. That’s difficult if you don’t fit the profile of their audience. If you’re from a diverse different background, my experience has been it pays to have someone help you with your profiling.
Furthermore, if your output changes that makes it more difficult for editors. For a period as an artist in residence at the Southbank Centre, this was something the artistic director Jude Kelly CBE was aware of and wanting to provide a platform for talent to experiment.
The innovation game is incredibly transient and traction can be difficult to achieve unless you break through perennial consciousness quotient e.g Musk etc. Here a name becomes associated with innovation.
Of course Social Media plays a bigger role today but even then if you’re relying on social it can be an incestuous full time job, so how do you avoid the pitfalls of “How not to innovate and win friends”.
Create a community, or become part of a flourishing community, or established one with idea entrepreneurs. Share the creative ideas, not as a hierarchy but so it’s a flat level and all enjoy in the process of building reputations. Find the repository that will do some heavy lifting for you.
One of those is to produce a book, a collective one. It becomes the substrate for a host of activities, such as parties, get togethers, sharing knowledge and creating further ideas e.g. videos etc.
It may seem strange that one of the oldest analogue artefacts continues to cut past digital in the festival of ideas. Remember not so long ago its future was at stake. Books would atrophy and eventually die. That’s hardly been the case. However their new lease of life has transformed them into a Chiron for multi-platform activities.
Twenty five years on since innovating from one space to another, I’m still searching ideas, oscillating from storytelling, design, diversity and education. Yep I’m breaking the very thing I should not be doing. However things have made it easier since the yesteryears.
This year I would share my ideas with the British Library as one of their advisors and would contribute to a book on 500 Years of News. I’d be invited to become one of Google’s Reviewers for its innovation fund — something I thoroughly enjoyed, and then ran a storytelling hub, which will result in a publication around some incredible people.
All of which leads to the best thing to do in not “How not to innovate and win friends”, and that is to give up. Not as grand as the findings of the lost tapes of Desert Island Disc with Bing Crosby et al. I recently with a friend stumbled across a rare collection of interviews I had in the 90s, with names like Actor Norman Beaton, Louis Gossett Jnr, and Eartha Kitt.
Frankly, you have to be in it to win it.
