In order to greater understand what we mean when we say “innovate” we’ve embarked on a community project collecting user submitted one-liners defining our perception of innovation. All posts and emailed submissions will be made public Monday morning with a cloud swarm highlighting key phrases in our definitions to follow in the coming week or two. To participate please visit http://jburg.typepad.com/futur.....l#comments . Looking forward to hearing from all of you!

The iPod was a big leap for them as computer company entering into the market for a gadget.

BUT… I think there is massive lesson for the Newspaper market who do you want controlling your market? Do you want an Apple or Google or Sony controlling your market? Are you going to handle it by suing them like some European Newspapers, or by coming up with new products like Apple.

I believe some of the problems is that online Newspapers have forgotten what people do with Newspapers… Try finding the TV listings on GuardianUnlimited. (They are there but hidden)… Where are the games? Where are the whats on listings? (and can I download them to google calender).

Maybe what wrong with Project Red Stripe was that they where trying to do one project for 200k instead of 10 projects for 10k….

Some newspaper should try a Y Combinator type competition to come up with ideas, from within the organization and from outside it.

I think how you define and undertake innovation depends on the nature of the organisation.

I don’t disagree that innovation is best served as part of an organisation’s DNA, but there is also a case for it to take place in a “skunkworks” environment (not that I regarded Project Red Stripe quite as a skunkworks). Your iPod/iTunes/Music Store argument is spot on (I’ve been using exactly this example since I started work on the project a year ago) - innovation is not about invention necessarily.

However, sometimes, it’s necessary to step out of the day to day to be able to look for things that represent true step-changes. This is partly what Clayton Cristensen talks about in The Innovators Dilemma - you need to do something to force people to think differently and then to see the possibilities if something innovative is thrown up.

The fact is that The Economist Group already innovates - the audio edition of The Economist is one recent example - and that as a team we decided ourselves that we wanted to create a quantum leap change (we had lots of incremental ones). Lughenjo would certainly have been that and the point about profit is perhaps glazed over. We wanted it to make money as that would be the best way that it could have remainded self-sustaining. The fact is that it was probably ahead of its time (a bit like an MP3 player before USB ports - yes I own a Diamond Rio!).

However, whilst the project had to end (so people could go back to their jobs), it has left a great legacy. Aside form the experience gained by those that worked on it, we developed some great ideas that will probably see some further work within the Group and, as I mentioned in my last blog post, I’m going to work on taking forward a development of Lughenjo. This last bit probably ties in with what you say as I’ll be doing so back at the “mother ship”.

As David Sifry said to me at the start of the project “if at first you don’t fail, then you haven’t tried hard enough”.

Here’s to success!

Excellent points, all the way around. For those of your readers (1) whose thinking has been clarified by your fine analysis, and (2) are warming to the idea of TAKING ACTION in the real world, I am please to offer:

Two links to stories about the new Knight Center for Digital Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University. I am SOOOOOOOOO glad that entrepreneurship is not a four-letter word amongst journos today.

http://www.poynter.org/column......aid=126008

http://cronkite.asu.edu/news/knight-052307.php

And a relevant discussion — with a few links of its own — from Poynter Online - E-Media Tidbits, Friday, July 13:

http://www.poynter.org/column......aid=126620

Have a good weekend, everybody.

REG CROWDER
London, UK & Brittany, FR
http://www.MediaBistro.com/RegCrowder