Integrating Platform Appropriately into our Innovation Thinking

http://theeschercycle.com/the-rise-in-network-thinking/

When new ideas come along we get excited. It's natural to take hold of an innovative new approach and see how far it will take us. The problem is that it its easy to ride that wave a bit too far. 

To be fair, sometimes we need to see how far new ideas will take us before they break. That is part of the discovery process. But my bigger concern is when we believe that the ride will never end. 

We have seen an example of this in the publishing industry. Content companies are going through such major disruption that we are looking for new solutions in all quarters. One of the bright spots for many content companies has been the idea of moving from producing content to owning the platform on which content is developed by the masses. 

Some think this may be the salvation for the publishing company. We should abandon production of expensive and risky content and move that risk to the end users who have their own audiences and personal platforms of engagement. 

Bharat Anand, author of The Content Trap, has been a strong proponent of this pivot. He makes his case concisely in the book, "Content businesses everywhere tend to define themselves by their content. This is the trap. The power of content is increasingly overwhelmed by the power of user connections, of which network effects are perhaps the most potent form.”

He makes a good point in that content companies have always been enamored with the virtue of their content, even in the face of clear signs that consumers were not interested. We need to see a correction in the "print it and they will come" assumption that still plagues the content world. 

But I think he has fallen into the trap of riding the innovation wave too far. Yes we need to integrate platform thinking and platform partnerships into the world of content publishing. But if content companies give up producing content as a core element of what they do, who are they? What is the identity of a content company that has given up the noble task of producing content. 

Greg Satell, author of Innovation Mapping, has a good corrective to this move to give up content in favor of platforms. "Pundits preach that instead of building things in the real world, business should "harness the power of networks." and create platforms based on "digital, intellectual, and relationship assets." Make no mistake, this is just a different version of the Enron pixie dust of 20 years ago. Real businesses have real assets."

Bharat is right that the power of our content will only be realized when we network it in integrated ways with platforms and people. But without Greg's corrective realization that we need real assets if we are to offer real value, the allure of platform-only plays is a dead end. 

The real innovations in the content business will come when we have a healthy identify in our core skills of creating world-class content and understand that this content is only as good as the platforms that use it to engage with it.