Courtsy of mashable.com

In the build up to this weeks Changing Media Summit 2013, disruptive digital innovation has been a hot topic. The term, first coined by Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School, describes the process in which ‘a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors’. Since the 1990s there has been a succession of digitally disruptive and ‘game changing’ enterprises. These have been rapidly debasing traditional business models across the media, entertainment, retail, financial and education sectors. In a report by the BBC, Saul Klein from Index Ventures comments:

‘Our long-term belief is that there is no sector that will not end up being changed by a combination of the Internet and software’

So what are the key features that make a digital innovation disruptive? So far common features of such innovations include:

- The opening up of products and services to customers at the lower end of the market who don’t necessarily require all functionalities offered by current products

- Business models which work from a grass-roots perspective, facilitating new, non-corporate interactions between individuals in these new markets

Kickstarter and Airbnb are two of the most successful examples of such innovations. Kickstarter has revolutionised the funding of new ideas, products and services; allowing innovators to bypass the financial sector in securing backing for new ideas, through individuals willing to pledge money through the site. So far Kickstarter has been responsible for the launch of 90,851 new products and services worth over 500 million dollars. Airbnb is a platform allowing people to book rooms at other people’s houses, as advertised on the site; it has been described as an innovation ‘turning spare rooms into the world’s hottest hotel chain’ (Austin Carr). In Airbnb’s fourth year of operations it facilitated over 10 million bookings worldwide and is currently surpassing the Hilton hotel chain in terms of the number of rooms filled. However, it is naïve to think that it has been plain sailing for all disruptive innovators, Über cars is a notable example that has generated considerable controversy (see here for more details).

It is clear that the acceleration in such developments over the last 5 years is no coincidence. With website and app creation becoming progressively more accessible, and an increased distrust of global corporations since the financial crisis, these types of innovations seem to be part of a natural progression. So should these innovations be seen as a threat or an opportunity? Many companies have taken a fearful stance towards such innovations, however as Genevive Shore (Chief Information Officer and Director of Digital Strategy at publishers Pearson) argues:

‘digital disruptions push companies forward to be more radical in our approach to digital, and more courageous’

In a recent report by the BBC, the greater benefits of a focus on creativity and digital development are evident; in tough economic times the digital and creative sectors have shone through. According to the study, this is currently the UK’s fastest expanding sector, contributing over 6% of Britain’s GDP and employing over 2 million people (read more here about the thriving technology sector). So it is clear that this growth in disruptive innovation is good for business and the UK economy, spurring companies to think innovatively to remain at the cutting edge. As Lisa Arthur of Forbes Magazine argues, it is clear that companies must face and embrace these ‘powerful and incredibly motivating’ innovations head-on.

crowdsourcing, digital, game changers, technology

Creativity’s a funny thing. Not only is it often thought of as an intangible quality that is bestowed on a rare fortunate few , but we are somewhat used to thinking that those rare few work alone, or that they at the very least, call the shots. Creative agencies have people called ‘creatives’, whose job it is to be creative and direct other people who aren’t creative.

Now of course we have partnerships like Lennon and McCartney, Simon and Garfunkel, Morecambe and Wise, Adam and Joe, examples of people who were on the same wavelength to such an extent that they can produce things which are wonderfully more than the sum of their parts.

Courtesy of megamusicnews.com

But lately I’ve got thinking that creativity itself is starting to take a different turn. Permit me to take you on a tangential dive into one of my pet loves.

Those who know me will know that I go on about gaming a lot. Too much, perhaps. And not in a l33t speak, last-weekend-I-played-CoDMW2-til-my-eyes-bled kind of way, but in a way which acknowledges that gaming’s move into mainstream is an event of real cultural significance, and that entertainment and art may never be the same again.

I have also been, for some time, fairly convinced of the analogy between a game having a designer and a novel having a writer – great novels can be crafted into works of art because often they are written by people with singular visions, who have control over every line, word and punctuation point (to a degree – I realise this is a somewhat naive conception of the contemporary publishing world, at least).

As gaming and the means by which to create games became popularised over the last, say, 20 years, it has become more and more possible for the creators of computer games to exhibit an analogous level of control over their creations. Picture lone programmer/designers, hunched over their machines in the late hours, just as the penniless artist might at their desk furiously scribbling / painting / typing when in the throes of an idea on a dark night, until everything is Just. Right. I believed that if the trend continued, you would eventually get games which were just as honed, just as artful, as great novels.

Courtesy of maxenurse.wordpress.com

However, having worked at a digital agency for some time now, it hit me the other day that that vision is unlikely to be the future, for computer games. I’m not discounting the possibility that single individuals can produce captivating gaming experiences; people like Jason Rohrer and Daniel Benmergui. But the thing about games is that they can be so complex and so full of variables, and require so many different skills, that actually the creativity you need to produce a great game is of a very different kind. Some games like Aquaria are created by designer – programmer collaborations, so you get a kind of Lennon-McCartney partnership, more still are created by small teams, like a band jamming to thrash out a song, and others are created by vast studios, like an entire orchestra getting together and saying ‘hey guys, shall we write a concerto? Dave, you take violin.’

To give an example: Bioshock contains innumerable imperceptible touches contributing to the feel of the game as a whole – the way that desks are left open when they’re searched; the way that Houdini splicers teleport in a plume of blood red mist; the way that lone enemies talk to themselves in wrecked corridors as a manifestation of their insanity.

Now, although it’s entirely possible that the same person came up with all of these little ideas, is it really likely? Is it likely that all of these were dictated by the same person who came up with the Ayn-Rand inspired dystopia that is Bioshock’s setting? Is it even likely that whoever decided to set the game in a decrepit, dripping art deco labyrinthine city under the sea, is an individual, rather than a group of writers?

Or is it more plausible that all of these things fell out of when a group of people threw everything they had into a Magimix and pressed ‘On’? For the record, I don’t know who came up with those ideas. Perhaps not even the people who came up with them know. Or maybe it was in fact all one person with a savant-like ability to describe the minutiae of a nightmare they had after finishing Atlas Shrugged in a single sitting.

Courtesy of www.healthinlife.com/

To bring it back here, the point I’m making is that digital experiences are now so complex, so involved, that to rely on one person to call all of the creative shots would be a nightmare. I’ve produced websites with little touches which I couldn’t have foreseen and told a developer to implement – these decisions come out of discussions and collaboration, and that’s where creativity lies now. We’ve all heard about megalomaniacal directors or musicians dictating absolutely everything on the projects in which they’re involved – but that’s a very difficult thing to do with a digital experience, more so than anything else, I would venture.

And as digital experiences become increasingly common, and increasingly admired, perhaps that will change our conception of creativity. I’m not for a moment suggesting that there’s no room for an individual’s vision, or for the leadership of a creative team, but perhaps there will be less of an emphasis on “genius” as applied to an individual – perhaps what will be most important will be people’s capacity to interact with one another. If games (and digital experiences in general) will become significant contributions to culture, and many of those games are produced by teams, perhaps some of the most valuable contributions to culture in times to come will be put forth by groups, rather than lonely artists. Your thoughts, ladies and gents?

Creative, crowdsourcing, games, Gaming, social media

As a facebook devotee, (and moreover one that tries to ignore the adverts) I’m always keen to hear of ideas for making the site financially viable. Therefore, the article, Networking site cashes in on friends, published by the Daily Telegraph (admittedly contested elsewhere) caught my eye as offering an interesting alternative to the traditional marketing/premium services conundrum.

Apparently, Zuckerberg and his team are planning to capitalize on facebook’s massive user-base through polls, and lots of them. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Zuckerberg demonstrated the power of facebook as a market research tool by asking 10,000 American users whether they believed that Obama’s fiscal stimulus package would revive the economy, and users in Israel and Palestine about contemporary peace issues. Impressively, he was able to feed the results back to the audience in minutes.

Surely facebook can’t compete with a trusty focus group for in-depth consumer insight, but with a user-base of 150 million and the ability to target users based on the information revealed in their profiles, facebook’s size could offer consumer brands the opportunity to almost instantaneously poll a very large sample of people.

Would I answer a poll that appeared on my minifeed? I’ll be interested to see.

crowdsourcing, facebook, market_research, web_2.0