
Identify your innovation gaps
Before you can “win” you need to understand your gaps in both capacity for innovation and your institutional capability to innovate.
The Table Stakes outlined here are about what news enterprises need to do to “get in the game.” But you don’t just want to play. You want to win. Learn what it takes to differentiate your news organization from others in ways that help you move from “survive” to “thrive.”
Before you can “win” you need to understand your gaps in both capacity for innovation and your institutional capability to innovate.
Once you’ve mastered the table stakes, there are things you can do to win. What does a winning local news enterprise look like?
You must have a team who manages, oversees and tracks progress toward fundamental innovation.
You must figure out how to collaborate – among yourselves and with others.
You must monitor innovations that emerge with an eye on quickly ‘following’ – using innovation disciplines to test whether and how what works elsewhere will or might work in your market.
You MUST establish a pool of money and explicitly dedicate resources to experimenting with fundamentally new and different ways of adding value to your markets and local communities
All news enterprises must continuously get better at what they do. But you also must be able to truly innovate.