chrisbrogan.com - Latest Comments in Growing New Crops

Re: Growing New Crops

first page google — Thu, 13 May 2010 17:51:39 -0000

Yes I liked this article as well. It was not only interesting, but informative as well. Thanks

Re: Growing New Crops

seostudio — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 07:28:11 -0000

A very interesting article!
I liked!
I would be here now go more often!

Re: Growing New Crops

deny.poerhdiyanto — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 02:23:05 -0000

Yup, I agree with you mate, but it's a high risk step to take,
what do you think?

Re: Growing New Crops

cirena — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:59:15 -0000

Large corporations incubating techno upstarts isn't a new idea...but its not always successful. In 2000, I worked for a large media conglomerate in Germany that was trying to do its own version of MyPoints, or online bonus program. We had just set everything up, selected prizes, had a marketing strategy and all, and corporate decided to buy a (at the time) successful start-up in the same field. Sometimes its easier and cheaper to buy the new technology or service than to develop it in-house.

Re: Growing New Crops

Scott Fox, E-Commerce Success — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:39:30 -0000

This is a nice theory but who needs the established media companies to incubate anything?

Entrepreneurs backed by the venture community have filled the gap just fine with plenty of promising startups.

Yes, the media companies should be doing it themselves (instead of hoping desperately that the Internet would somehow go away...) but they also have the luxury of being fast-followers and using their deep pockets to acquire the best startups.

My whole career has been based on (profitably) helping this transition. Media companies and startups need each other.

Market-based evolution at work.

Re: Growing New Crops

Debra — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:38:02 -0000

As a recent MSM evacuee, this post is spot-on from my perspective. I would have loved it if my former employer had gotten this "radical" instead of trying to force things to fit online because they fit in print. Two different media, two different audiences with different expectation, needs and demands.

Yes, timely content is key whether it's Old Media or New Media. But the delivery and display are dramatically different and too few in Old Media grasp that. Yes, part of it is about control. You can't control a forum, a blog site, story comments, community calendar submissions. It's your community, your readers/users, God love 'em, and in this day, they want their say. Provide a platform where they can interact and they'll stay around. Otherwise, they'll set up their Google news alerts and stop by your site only when something grabs their attention.

Re: Growing New Crops

ccseed — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:34:28 -0000

Love the seed reference (and I'm working to put a head shot in twitter profile, I listened). During lunch yesterday Paul discussed how middle management causes constipation for the next new thing. I'd put a lot of effort in creating the escape pod teams to provide full range variety of types and strengths. I'd also be upfront and make clear to the group why each was chosen, so they can see themselves in a community model, not a corporate model, giving them the best opportunity to hit the ground running.

I think the incentive of revenue sharing, signing for a clear "lay" to use the whaling terminology, and to have all aspects of of the financial eventualities placed on the table in full view, would optimize term performance.

Re: Growing New Crops

BarbaraKB — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:18:37 -0000

Old Media vs. New Media: it's all media. And while NYTimes, WSJ and People and so many other "old media" types have already done what you suggest (and many have lost lots of $$ doing it), Chris, it still comes down to this: timely content. A piece of that timely content is participation by readers/users. But not at the expense of timeliness and good content. Take a look @ what's happening with our current political scene: rumors and muck raking all over the internet from both parties @ all sorts of sites and blog. Where does someone go for the timely and *good* content? What's a user to do? Who do they trust? Peace (as always)!

Re: Growing New Crops

Zack Brandit — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:59:57 -0000

I agree with Josh and Bob. Managers desire control as it is their way to claim responsibility and prove their function is needed. Bigger the company, usually larger the hierarchy.
This of course impacts the organisational culture.

Shareholders also have their word to say and many are prone to risk aversion when considering innovation.

On the other hand the intention behind this innovation is extremely important and must resonate in the company (and out)as pure.

With today's economical situation, people may think twice before deciding to jump into an innovative but risky business. One can easily lose his job.

In any case, companies will soon realize that they will have to invest differently in their branding strategy. By engaging their employees and other stakeholders larger firms might create smaller and yet better managed projects.
The "escape pod" is an interesting model, but I believe the team will need more nurturing than just cash and a scorecard.

With ZackBrandit, I didn't think twice.
Me & my team followed your philosophy and started small.
Time will tell if we made the right decision.
In the meantime I invite you to check our blog http://blog.zackbrandit.com
where we talk about brand engagement.

Re: Growing New Crops

Frank Reed — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 10:36:03 -0000

Chris,

We should always try. We just need to make sure that when we try we do things with meaning and intention. It's when we do the "live and let live" thing that it quickly gets messy.

Re: Growing New Crops

Craig Kessler — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 10:35:26 -0000

A lot of companies are very traditional and for them to change won't happen overnight. Some companies are developing new ways like Hulu or HBO and how they are integrating a new online TV show. We are beginning to see more media companies collaborating with online teams to produce more innovative and quality content. I think things will pick up even more over the next few years.

Craig
www.budgetpulse.com

Re: Growing New Crops

Rebecca Krause-Hardie — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 10:10:11 -0000

If you don't really REALLY mean it, its just window dressing. When I worked for Voyager years ago, Bob Stein was a wonder at creating an environment of innovation. (and complete chaos too :>) But what I remember about what works is this. 1) Leadership from the very tippy top supported it wholeheartedly because they believed in it, not something to kinda sorta play around with maybe crap.
2) It was actually okay to have huge turnover, but that evolved into relationships that continued. Bob would bring in these young kids from NYU or wherever, set them lose, and then after a couple years they went off and created their own thing, but strong connections remained.
3) Stay friends and support them in their new adventures - you don't have to own them, to have beneficial relationships and value - eg partners.
okay that's my 3 cents.

Re: Growing New Crops

Jeff Wiedner — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:10:59 -0000

I believe it was Tom Peters who said it's easier to kill and organization than to change it. There seem to be few established orgs that are capable of radical, breakout change. Part of it might be that they're not managed to it (held accountable for it). But I think you need a bit of a "punk"/radical attitude to break away from the pack. Ultimately, that's not typically condoned or fostered within even the more entrepreneurial organizations.

Re: Growing New Crops

chrisbrogan — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 08:43:10 -0000

It's a great opinion, Frank. Do humans ruin things? All the time. Look at the planet.

But should we try?

Re: Growing New Crops

Frank Reed — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 07:41:07 -0000

Today the WSJ talks about AOL's attempt to be relevant and grow a new crop, so to speak. Granted, they probably should rotate their crops because AOL has sucked all the life giving nutrients out of their current situation but I digress. This is the classic meeting of old world media (Time Warner) and "supposed" new media (AOL). The ensuing train wreck has been seen and heard around the world. Chris, I think your "system" is on in theory but the true wild card in any of this is relationships. How well do the insiders and outsiders play together and will egos take a great idea on paper and just make it an exercise in power and ego. Sounds kinda dark, I know that. Cold hard reality is though that it's the people that make it work. There have been some bad plans that have been able to 'evolve" due to strong leadership and that would be required to pull off your model effectively. Oh and how many times have GREAT plans / ideas been completely derailed by egomaniacs and power mongers? Unfortunately most people "turn" when they have some power so there needs to be testing of the team before there is testing of the idea. This is obviously just one man's opinion.

Re: Growing New Crops

Tyler Hayes — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 02:48:11 -0000

One site comes to mind: Hulu.

Beyond that, at least a lot of these big companies you speak of are at least trying now; albeit, mostly by just devouring the companies (e.g. CBS bought last.fm, etc. etc.).

Re: Growing New Crops

Jeremy, PR4Pirates — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 02:17:07 -0000

Let me amend what I just wrote...

replace: "you simply can’t spend time thinking about innovative things."

with this: "you simply can’t spend time thinking about innovative things that have a 5-10 year harvest horizon and don't help you get your next bonus."

Re: Growing New Crops

Jeremy, PR4Pirates — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 01:40:54 -0000

I don't think you can just blame culture and bad bureaucratic people... if you manage a legacy business and your incentives rest on finding another $5-50M in incremental revenue, you simply can't spend time thinking about innovative things.

At Knight Ridder we had plenty of smart, innovative people, but the opportunities (e.g. Newshound, an early subscription based version of Google Alerts/Filtrbox/Vibemetrix/Meltwater/CustomScoop), just couldn't move the needle fast enough.

Probably the biggest mistake was to not spin out the new media ventures as completely as possible.

Re: Growing New Crops

bob ashley — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 01:26:12 -0000

I agree with Jason, except I'd offer "organizational culture" may have broader relevance than "corporate culture". Both the private and public sectors share a pathology (psychosis?) of stultifying bureaucracy. Daniel Boone, the individual, blazes trails in the wide open frontier, but his organized followers build fiefdoms and fortresses. Preparedness for change is a survival mechanism for Daniel Boone, just as its polar opposite--resistance to change--marks the organization's preservation instinct. Empires, private or public, depend on an unmoving gravitational center. That's why I work for a small town--we manage to retain a residue of the guerilla's flexibility.

Re: Growing New Crops

Josh Peters — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 01:23:13 -0000

I think the biggest think it comes down to is control. I work in for a telecommunications company and when it comes to innovating something new it's really hard to gain traction because they want VP's and Directors to have direct control and won't let the innovators innovate. It's hard to get them to part ways with any money because they want to know the exact ROI and if you can't prove it to be favorable then they won't sign off on it. So for them a live or die mentality doesn't work because they want something that will definitely live (even though a lot of their VP backed projects die).

To me this falls back into the whole reason why so many of the Fortune 500 don't use social media at all or even to the extent that they could (compared to the inc. 500 who have a fairly high %). That reason is control, the company would have to give up a little control over it's employees, funding given, etc. The whole idea of someone else having control over a project (especially a "non management" emloyee) scares most large companies to death. They feel they can't afford the "we've got nothing to loose" mentality and if something fails it will reflect badly on them, instead of spinning it as "well at least we tried".

I agree with your model and think that if more companies adopted this model we would see some great things come about not in just "old media" but in any company that dug back into the original entrepreneurial spirit that created them and took the chance to create something new.

Re: Growing New Crops

Rotkapchen — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 01:21:45 -0000

Do newspapers know they're being marginalized? Most do. They're just not sure what to do about it. Aritifact: San Diego Union Tribune sent a staffer to FASTforward '07 in San Diego to learn more about Enterprise 2.0. Had great deep conversations with that individual.

It's kinda like the issue I saw at MCI. The entire engine of MCI cashflow was held up by the telemarketing centers. It was a finely tuned engine. But it was losing speed (incentives based on 'sign-ups' soon turned into revolving doors of returning customers). Changing the model, however was so precarious that the wheels would start falling off and the business couldn't survive that much change.

That's the beauty of 2.0. It's about doing lots of small stuff, but you have to start. NOW!

Re: Growing New Crops

Jeremiah Staes — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 01:19:16 -0000

Fascinating thinking, if not requiring a major culture shift.

A question though with this move.. A lot of salesfolks at these publications will tell you their online properties trade print dollars for digital cents.

Although I agree that this shift is not just coming but here, there's a lot more than just editorial/content that need to be brought onboard.

Re: Growing New Crops

Jeremy, PR4Pirates — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 01:06:44 -0000

When I was at Knight Ridder New Media in the late 90's, we had an inside VC, Peter Rip, who looked at a lot of internal innovation initiatives, and couple years ago wrote a brilliant post about the experience:

http://earlystagevc.typepad...

Most pertinent:

"The Internet offers the opportunity for new entrants to build worldwide scale businesses with relatively little investment. But crushes the residual value of shareholder equity invested in obsolete local, physical cost structures. What looks like a great return on equity business for a new entrant looks like a balance sheet disaster for the incumbent."

"This epiphany hit home in a staff meeting when it became clear that the top line impact of all of a successful New Media effort at KRI might have the scale of one medium-sized newspaper property."

So Peter argues it's a capitalization issue. At some point there must be a balance-- newspaper valuations will gradually erode enough to make the numbers work.

But Peter Drucker (Innovation & Entrepreneurship) and Clayton Christianson (Innovator's Dilemma) say it's also a matter of attention. Even a potential home run is too small at first to get managers in the legacy business to pay attention or sacrifice resources needed to fulfill existing profitable demand.

So if you're serious about launching a new venture, the legacy business has to cut a check and let the new team get away (physically, P&L, everything).

Re: Growing New Crops

Jason Kintzler — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:58:52 -0000

Great post, super thought-provoking as usual. I attribute it to the general corporate culture. As companies grow, it becomes less about the products or the innovation and more about the shares and the bottom line. They're less likely to take risks and rethink their business. It becomes growth by acquisition, not evolution. Sad scenario, but I've experienced it in other industries as well.

Re: Growing New Crops

brantc — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:52:18 -0000

I came from TV and wanted to build the next Revision 3, built a site www.stationx.tv and started a show all on bootstrap. made a model, pitched to VC and was told I had a good idea but what could I do on my own without money. That became www.beerutopia.com is it a blog, vlog, magazine? I do not know the definition yet but we are having some success and starting to sell sponsors. So I am not trying for VC anymore, we are just rolling up our sleeves and going to work!