SIPAlert Daily – Bezos’ 3 big ideas and making ‘the new thing’

Two quotes from Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and the new owner of The Washington Post, stood out for me this week:

1) “We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient. If you replace ‘customer’ with ‘reader,’ that approach, that point of view, can be successful at The Post, too.”

2) “You have to figure out: How can we make the new thing?”

Looking through the newspaper clippings on my desk—the physical print business may be in “structural decline,” according to Bezos, but you wouldn’t know it by my desk and living room—that “new thing” can be so many things. New products and services are debuting all the time, offering customers more choices for how they manage their personal and professional lives.

I am quite sure that most “inventions” did not happen without some kind of group discussion, either in flushing out the idea or helping to develop it. That’s also the idea behind SIPA’s upcoming Fall Publishers Roundtable, Monday, Sept. 30, here in Washington, D.C. The topic is Creating Profitable New Products, and the two leaders, David Foster of BVR and Don Nicholas of Mequoda, will attempt to harness the amazing group knowledge that will be present to help you make your “new thing.”

I read another article recently on this topic titled, “Are You Innovating With a Purpose?” by Marillyn Hewson, chief executive of Lockheed Martin. Her point is that innovation is much more likely to occur when there is a purpose driving it—besides money. “Have a goal that’s bigger than just meeting a deadline or closing a sale,” she writes. “…How can I innovate myself so that I’m achieving a purpose that benefits my organization and is fulfilling to me?” For her, it’s sharing ideas through social media.

For his part, Bezos’ passion has always been with “the printed word in all its forms.” So you could say that he invented a new way of bringing that to an audience. “The key thing about a book is that you lose yourself in the author’s world,” he said. “Great writers create an alternative world. It doesn’t matter if you enter that world” digitally or through print.

For the Post, he wants to bring back the “daily ritual” of reading the paper—and believes that he can do that through tablets more than on a website. He says that tablets can give readers a look and feel similar to a traditional printed paper. Websites remain important for the B2B world of SIPA, but looking at when and how your subscribers/members open your emails will give you better data to judge that.

And most importantly, Bezos says, “don’t be boring.” At first glance, we might think that he’s talking only to his newly acquired staff of writers, but I think he’s talking to the entire newspaper. In whatever role you play, engagement is key. If you’re a marketer, your next email should be a little different than the last. If you’re in sales, try a new bundle of products. And if you’re the person in charge, step back for a moment and think about what your new app might be.

And think about coming to that Sept. 30 roundtable. New things usually don’t happen without a push.

 

To subscribe to the SIPAlert Daily, create or update your SIIA User profile and select “SIPA interest.”


Ronn LevineRonn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

SIPAlert Daily – The importance of talking meaningfully with your customers

To create new norms, you have to understand people’s existing norms and barriers to change. You have to understand what’s getting in their way.

Atul Gawande in his July 29 New Yorker magazine article on innovation

Last week I spoke with Joe May, the marketing director for SIPA member Pro Farmer. They are currently in the middle of their biggest week of the year: Crop Tour. The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Reuters all cover it. He told me that more and more farmers are using mobile devices, and that tablets are “exploding” for his audience. “The commercials you see probably don’t show that,” he said. iPads on a tractor? Who knew?

Pro Farmer does. They are helping to create new norms for farmers by talking to them, meeting with them and understanding their situations. Out of that understanding comes:

• Pro Farmer Text Quotes sent three times daily to cell phones;

• voice alerts with market advice and breaking news;

• Pro Farmer Today, seven profit-building reports, easy to read on any device; and

• an audio Monday Morning wake up call.

In the first webinar of SIIA’s new Mobile Essentials series held last week, Andy Swindler, president of Astek Consulting, presented a case study they did for SIPA member EB Medicine. (If you are a member and missed this, let us know and we will send you the link. It was an amazing session.) The goals were to get in touch with EB Medicine’s readers, understand what the true value proposition of mobile would be for them, and finally separate the mobile buzz from reader reality.

“Overall, they showed good growth in mobile traffic,” Swindler said. But he questioned if that was enough to justify a huge financial outlay. “Don’t let fear guide a critical decision. Anecdotes, buzz, a couple survey responses, is that enough to say this is a direction? They had done quantitative research.” But Swindler decided that they needed some qualitative research as well.

Astek spoke in-depth with five emergency room physicians—the EB Medicine audience—to truly understand what they needed, “rather than just get answers to survey questions.” They wanted to know “how they think, how they are using this technology. How are they using their iPhone in the emergency room? Would they look up some medical fact? Would a quick reference guide help them do their jobs better?”

The findings were critical in guiding EB Medicine’s next steps. It made them think about their content differently. It helped them understand that they had more than one kind of reader. “It’s not enough to just say this is our readers,” Swindler said. “We needed a deeper understanding of that core value of EB Medicine.”

In the article that Gawande wrote for The New Yorker, he tried to figure out why certain worthwhile innovations don’t spread, and how they can be spread. He quotes the scholar Everett Rogers: “Diffusion is essentially a social process through which people talking to people spread an innovation.” And his “talking” does not mean through social media.

The Pro Farmer Crop Tour is basically about touching the people with information. More than 100 volunteer crop scouts are going out every day this week to take corn and soybean measurements with reports given each night in meetings across the Midwest. Can you imagine how much Pro Farmer gains from a week like this? They are gathering key information and meeting many of their members—their word, not mine. “This is followed closely by the farmers we serve,” May said. “…There’s a video crew embedded in the tour and it blew up on Twitter.” (Pro Farmer actually has a video studio in their Cedar Falls, Iowa, offices.)

Gawande tells a story that he says “salespeople understand well.” He asked a pharmaceutical rep how he persuaded typically stubborn doctors to “adopt a new medicine. Evidence is not remotely enough, [the rep] said, however strong a case you may have. You must also apply ‘the seven rules of touches.’ Personally ‘touch’ the doctors seven times, and they will come to know you; if they know you, they might trust you; and, if they trust you, they will change.”

It’s hard for publishers to touch all of their customers in the way that this pharmaceutical rep started stocking doctors’ closets with free samples and then asking how their daughter’s soccer game went. But you can duplicate that human interaction in other meaningful ways, either through live events, in-depth interviews or maybe some kind of Twitter Chat or webinar Q&A.

Regardless, publishers, like any other business, need to reach out to their own markets in a meaningful way before making the big decisions that affect the bottom line.

To subscribe to the SIPAlert Daily, create or update your SIIA User profile and select “SIPA interest.”


Ronn LevineRonn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

Momentum Growing for Federal Investment in Digital Learning

Educators and public officials are no longer asking “if” technology, but instead “how” can they best support and leverage the modernization of schools and teaching through technology and digital learning. That effort has received several boosts this month, including today when President Obama will announce the ConnectED initiative.

Most significantly, “The President is calling on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to modernize and leverage the existing E-Rate program [to] . . . within five years, connect 99 percent of America’s students, through next-generation broadband (at speeds no less than 100Mbps and with a target of 1Gbps) to, and high-speed wireless within, their schools and libraries.” E-Rate funding has been relatively flat at $2.25 billion since its creation in 1996, while the need for, and the demand for, connectivity has grown dramatically.

The President’s proposal also directs the U.S. Department of Education “to make better use of existing funds to get this technology into classrooms, and into the hands of teachers trained on its advantages,” including especially around teacher professional development through Title II of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

Notably, the President’s propsoal identifies the need to “Build on Private-Sector Innovation” to “allow our teachers and students to take full advantage of feature-rich educational devices . . . and high-quality educational software (including applications) . . .”

Federal support is also growing in Congress. Representative George Miller, Ranking Democrat on the House Education & the Workforce Committee, has introduced the Transforming Education Through Technology Act (HR521) to support school technology readiness and teacher professional development to ensure all students can access and benefit from technology. And Senate H.E.L.P. Committee Chairman Tom Harkin includes a number of related programs and provisions in his recently introduced Strengthening America’s Schools Act of 2013. The Harkin proposal builds on legislation (S1087) recently introduced by Senators Hagan, Murray and Baldwin.  At SIIA’s April policy forum (in conjunction with CoSN, ISTE and SETDA), FCC Commissioner Rosenworcel announced a related package of proposed changes to the E-Rate to increase its funding and improve its administration.

SIIA supports and has championed these federal proposals to increase investments in education targeted to both increase access to, and enhance the use of, educational technologies. Learning technologies are needed to improve learning opportunities, engagement and personalization. Yet SIIA’s Vision K20 educator survey and other data shows that access to and use of these technologies is limited.

SIIA calls on the FCC and Congress to advance these and related initiatives needed to ensure all students and educators can realize the educational benefits made possible by technology.

As the President’s proposal articulates: “From digital textbooks that help students visualize and interact with complex concepts, to apps and platforms that adapt to the level of individual student knowledge and help teachers know precisely which lessons or activities are working, this technology is real, it is available, and its capacity to improve education is profound.”


Mark SchneidermanMark Schneiderman is Senior Director of Education Policy at SIIA.

IIS Breakthrough Talk Recap: Incubating Innovation

Written by Ric Camacho, Chief Strategy Officer, MyCollegePrice

Ric Camacho, Chief Strategy Officer, MyCollegePrice

How do large, established institutions foster innovation and significantly encourage the growth of the start-up community in their area?

Well one way is to take Cornell University’s high profile approach of pouring millions of dollars into a new technology campus in NYC. The other is NYU-Poly’s incubator approach. “It’s more art than science”, according to Steve Kuyan, executive director of the NYU-Poly Incubator Initiatives. Kuyan gave a brief talk on NYU-Poly’s initiative to kickstart innovation at the 2013 Information Industry Summit in New York last week. At the heart of New York’s burgeoning start-up environment, NYU-Ploy’s formula offers a combination of mentorship, educational resources, access to capital and industry leaders, community and physical “ecosystem” along with a healthy dose of “celebration and inspiration.”

The NYU-Poly Incubator Initiatives is one of the large number of university-based organizations around the country that seek to encourage and capitalize on the growth of technology. According to the National Business Incubation Association, fully one-third of the business incubators around the United States are associated with universities. The incubator initiative at NYU-Poly has been successful in helping over 20 companies in the past three years raise significant venture funding. According to to Kuyan, with as little as $3 million in investment, the incubators initiative has had over $200 million of economic impact and this is expected to grow to just under $1 billion by 2015. That’s no mean feat for a relatively new endeavor within a start-up environment — New York City — that, although going from strength to strength, has numerous initiatives clamoring for investment and capital.

NYU-Poly’s approach promotes the idea of “innovation anywhere” emphasizing the importance of the right physical environment and access to tools while also imposing some discipline around process and procedures and meeting metrics and milestone expectations–all in an effort to channel creativity and innovation.

In the end, Kuyan believes that their approach is key to lending validation and credibility to entrepreneurial start-ups. In the end, they are critical to accelerating and harnessing innovation. “All entrepreneurs today face similar problems”, according to Kuyan, and NYU-Poly’s success can be attributed in part to meeting their very basic needs.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Ric Camacho

Ric has held senior product and management positions at a number of start-ups as well as at Reuters Media and Dow Jones. Most recently he was GM at Vitals, a NYC area-based Health 2.0 start-up, and headed up its B2B segment that delivered tools, technology and digital marketing services to the health provider market. Currently Ric is working on strategy and business development work for MyCollegePrice, an education innovator providing analysis and forecasting tools for the college advisory market.

IIS Breakthrough recap: CEOsThe Key Catalysts for Innovation

Written by Ric Camacho, Chief Strategy Officer, MyCollegePrice

Chief Strategy Officer, MyCollegePrice

Closing out the 2013 SIIA Information Industry Summit was a rather interesting roundtable on the importance of the CEO to change and innovation in enterprise. David Reimer, CEO at Merryck & Co. moderated with the participation of Nina Link, former CEO at both the Children’s Television Workshop and the Magazine Publishers Association as well as Merrill Brown, Director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University.

Although billed as a discussion around the critical role of the CEO, much of the discussion centered around the challenges of large “legacy” companies acquiring and integrating innovative smaller companies. Both participants emphasized the challenge of corporate culture and how big legacy companies repeatedly stifle the sought after innovation – one of the principle reasons for an acquisition – as they often subsume the acquired company within a company where innovation is alien and change isn’t necessarily the overarching mode of operations. Link emphasized that importance of running parallel operational tracks – in essence leaving the acquired company alone – so that innovative practices can be absorbed by the larger entity – admittedly a tall order.

Brown indicated that significant and systemic changes often need to and should be adopted by the legacy company and in particular, these companies often need to adopt the perspectives and working culture of the smaller entity around things such as product strategy and development and the myriad of marketing and other activities that surround that endeavor.

Both Link and Brown thought the CEO had to be at the heart of these changes and foster an atmosphere of change within the organization while also pushing the agenda at the board level. Interestingly, Link thought it was hugely important to co-opt outside industry leadership in support of an CEO – led innovation initiative at the board level to give those efforts gravitas and integrity and to help navigate around potential resistance.

One of the trickier issues was raised by Brown. He indicated that one of the significant challenges in legacy organizations is the empowerment of change agents, particularly in companies where generational shifts in expertise and digital competence were at the core of the necessary change. Oftentimes, he said, a company’s first reaction to revenue pressures is to downsize and let go new, young talent with little seniority – talent which generally holds the keys to overall change, new thinking and innovation. Companies need to rethink their efforts in this regard and CEOs need to spearhead the management of this change.

One important shift in corporate governance that Merrill brown has seen in recent years is a greater willingness of corporate boards to provide better executive incentives to support innovation and move away from the quarter-by-quarter goals that often militate against risk-taking and innovation. Only time will tell whether this shift truly takes hold and provides a significant boost and support to C-suite behavior in that direction.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Ric has held senior product and management positions at a number of start-ups as well as at Reuters Media and Dow Jones. Most recently he was GM at Vitals, a NYC area-based Health 2.0 start-up, and headed up its B2B segment that delivered tools, technology and digital marketing services to the health provider market. Currently Ric is working on strategy and business development work for MyCollegePrice, an education innovator providing analysis and forecasting tools for the college advisory market.

10 Reasons Why the Ed Tech Bubble will Continue to Float

Fueled in part by socially-conscious investors and tech entrepreneurs, investment in the educational applications market has exploded to an extent not seen since the dot-com boom more than a decade ago. While some analysts are predicting this is an era of irrational exuberance that could collapse like the bubble burst in 2000, there are at least 10 reasons why this time is different:

  1. Lower Development Costs: Hardware and software tools have improved and costs lowered, and the savings in application development and delivery means reduced prices and higher marginal revenues. Improvements include simpler and more powerful authoring tools, many of them open source, as well as cloud and other hosted models that enable schools and companies to more easily outsource and scale.  
  2. Apps Market Dynamics: The proliferation of Apps on various mobile devices provides a more welcoming market environment for educational technology companies. Among these factors is the reduced cost of development and distribution on the various mobile operating systems such as Android and iOS and their app stores (though some revenue sharing models do challenge the equation).
  3. Increased Hardware Access & Connectivity: While a digital divide still exists and too many classrooms still rely on a single computer station, student and teacher access (at home and school) has grown many fold over the last decade. Reasons for this include the reduced cost of hardware (driven by Moore’s law), growing support for BYOD (student’s Bringing their Own Device), and recent investments in tablets, electronic whiteboards and other devices.
  4. Touch Tablet Ease of Use: Many educators view the touch interface as a game changer for student learning through technology. School (and home) spending bears that out. The platforms provide a simplified user interface for students, a simplified operating system that eases school technical support costs, and a tactile functionality that is both beneficial to younger learners and provides a key pedagogical differentiator from other print and digital mediums. 
  5. Educators Asking How, Not If: Educators have crossed the tipping point from asking “if?” technology to asking “how, how much and what?” While luddites still exist and we are a long way from robust integration and effective use, teachers, administrators and policy makers recognize the upside of technology and digital learning and are focused on how to realize the power and promise.
  6. The New Normal: Our education system is charged with doing more with less in light of the recent recession and enhanced common, college and career readiness standards. Technology has increased productivity in other sectors, and K12 education is finally looking at technology to supplant and transform, rather than simply to supplement. At the same time, many are leveraging technology for data analytics, customized interventions, and blended learning that shift us from mass-production teaching to the more efficient, mass-customization personalized learning model.
  7. Educators as Digital Natives: Interestingly, in the past, it has been more veteran teachers that have gravitated to technology than younger teachers who grew up with technology. This is likely starting to change as the technology use by the young teachers and administrators in their personal (and learning) lives is much more prolific in today’s world of mobile apps, virtual communities and online everything. The education workforce is shifting over rapidly post baby-boom generation, and their technology use will follow.
  8. Digital Native Students: Not much need be said. Students are too often disengaged not by the lack of technology but instead by rote lectures and static text. They understand they must be engaged and challenged, and allowed to explore and personalize their learning. They see how technology supports them outside of school. Educators are responding to their demand to bring that robust learning environment into their curriculum or risk losing too many more students to boredom.
  9. Expanded Distribution: While the proliferation of channels — technology platforms as well as consumer forums — can be a challenge for developers, these will be outweighed by the benefits. Mobile devices and app stores are increasing access and reducing consumer risk. Formal and informal learning are blending as parents and non-school learning providers gain access to new tools. Teachers are no longer reliant on slow, one-size school or district-wide purchasing decisions, but instead can use a debit account to download a product for just one or a few students. And a number of repositories and social networks are providing single points of information (if not yet a point of sales) for all products (and marketing).
  10. Parental Advocacy: Increased parental exposure to learning technologies at home is driving their demand for use at school. While parents were sometimes the road block to school board investments, they are more often now leading the charge.

These differences do not imply that every new product and company will succeed. For better or worse, there are probably too many products on the market relative to the number of average users required for product success. Whether investment is all flowing to the right solutions and the right entrepreneurs is still an open question, but it is undeniable that there is growing demand and opportunity for technology in education.

It is also important to note one related potential market challenge — vendor lock-in of content and data. A dynamic market requires minimized barriers to entry such that (school and individual) users are empowered to seamlessly move among existing and new products with minimal risk. SIIA therefore encourages education decision makers and application developers to invest in interoperability. By creating and demanding applications built on common data, content and API standards, information and resources can be more easily shared and exported among any number of proprietary or open applications, thus reducing the risk to educators of a failed product or company. Such standardization is critical for the maturity, and therefore the growth, of the digital learning market, and will ultimately best serve both education and education providers.

These 10 important developments should encourage today’s developers and investors. While the ed tech bubble may not float ever higher, a burst is not likely this time around.


Mark SchneidermanMark Schneiderman is Senior Director of Education Policy at SIIA. Follow the Education Division on Twitter at @SIIAEducation.

SIIA Partners with ITIF on Data Innovation Day

SIIA is happy to announce that they will partner with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) for Data Innovation Day, coming tomorrow, January 24, 2013.  Data Innovation Day works to raise awareness about the benefits and opportunities that come from increased use of information both by individuals and the public/private sector.

This year’s theme is “Big Data. Bigger Opportunities.”

As part of Data Innovation Day, ITIF will host panel discussions in DC on how government agencies are using data to make government work more effectively and efficiently, as well as highlighting interesting examples of how data innovation is transforming different sectors of the economy. DMA will also host a virtual event to celebrate data-driven marketing innovation – and to engage data-driven marketers in the growing data debate that is taking shape in Washington and around the world. For more information, visit the Data Innovation Day schedule of events.


Tracy Carlin is a Communications and Public Policy Intern at SIIA. She is also a first year graduate student at Georgetown University’s Communication, Culture and Technology program where she focuses on intersections in education, video games and gender.