To cut to the chase, can we all please agree that we are still only in the early stages of radical disruption of all media businesses?
A radical disruption that has been brought about mainly by the internet & its ability to change media consumption habits and reduce the power of old media models.
If we all agree and start from this point then maybe we can look outside our media world and look at some of the lessons from other industries that have experienced the same disruption in the past.
How did companies in tech, music, transport or telecoms industries cope? Which companies survived and prospered? Which ones withered and died; and what can we learn as a result?
With all this in mind I was particularly interested to hear a keynote from Simon Waldman at Incisive Media’s E-Publishing Innovation Forum recently. Simon has recently left a senior digital position at The Guardian newspaper and joined LoveFilm.
His presentation “Creative Disruption – or OMG! The Internet ate my business” was based on an upcoming book of the same name. I wanted to list a few of the highlights for me and suggest that you pre-order his book (due out in October this year).
Simon started his talk by highlighting that a process of creative disruption is an essential fact of capitalism. He quoted Joseph Schumpeter from 1939 explaining that a railroad through new country “upsets all conditions of location, all cost calculations, all production functions within its radius of influence; and hardly any ‘ways of doing things’ which have been optimal before remain so afterwards.”
Tag: multimedia
The Future of Reading and Writing is Collaborative | Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning
“I think the definition of writing is shifting,” Boardman said. “I don’t think writing happens with just words anymore.”
In his classes, Boardman teaches students how to express their ideas and how to tell stories —and he encourages them to use video, music, recorded voices and whatever other media will best allow them to communicate effectively. He is part of a vanguard of educators, technologists, intellectuals and writers who are reimagining the very meaning of writing and reading.
“The written word is coming to life by being a key part of multimedia,” Boardman said. “When people can not only pick up something by the written word, but also listen to it, see it move across the screen or see someone’s interpretation of that word through moving images, then I think it becomes much more alive.”