The Economist Magazine Looks Outside For Insight

An anonymous reader writes "All of traditional media is scrambling to remain relevant on the Net, but The Economist of London is taking it to extremes, with a skunkworks operation called Project Red Stripe. The magazine gathered six staffers from around the world, set them up in a London office, and gave them six months to come up with a radically new idea for the business. As a magazine for free markets, they figured others would have the best ideas — so are throwing open the doors for community input."

You Can't Create Innovation

[tedhiltonhead]

This raises an interesting question about the value of ideas. Naively, one might guess that anyone with sufficiently good ideas for the Economist's future are a) already working there, b) already working for some other organization that will use them, or c) independent entrepreneurs, implementing their ideas themselves. However, there is a real possibility that forward-thinking people do exist outside those categories, and who are perfectly willing and able to articulate their ideas to others in an actionable way.

From the Economist's standpoint, however, creating an "innovation group" seems misguided. You can't *cause* innovation and creativity; you can only *allow* it to happen on its own. This occurs through maximal exposure to atypical influences, such as books, activities, people, and entertainment that one might not ordinarily choose. This, in fact, is how the brain grows -- by forming new synaptic pathways among its neurons.

The Economist, or any organization, can best innovate by encouraging *all* its employees to, in the course of their ordinary work, occasionally take a moment to submit to management their views of how the organization's processes or other aspects can be improved, as it occurs to them. Good management must know how to create this culture. Everyone can be an innovator.

Re:Model

[dotslashdot]

You obviously thought this up all by yourself, without the help of a committee, because it is really stupid, thereby disproving your point. Democracies ARE committees; that's the whole point. When you leave one or a handful of people in charge, you get Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Incompetence. Occasionally you get Hitler, Stalin and Mussolinis. Unchecked madness. Are you saying democracies are losers and military fascists are winners? Also, your pointless rant is unfounded. These 10,000 assumed jackasses you refer to are merely offering ideas. A handful of people are making the decision of which ideas to go forward with. I don't understand why you're going crazy, except maybe that you could use a committee.

Re:Model

[PopeRatzo]

Don't forget, though, that the country that wins gets to write the history. And, since people in power hate the idea of anyone but themselves making the decisions, they will invariably ascribe faults to the loser such as you describe:

"They waged war by committee, legislature, blah blah blah".

There were a couple of countries in "the modern era" that were extremely authoritarian in model (Germany, Japan) and who lost a fairly big skirmish to countries that were anything but (USA, England) who both had huge running squabbles between political parties, legislatures, committees, etc. all through their war effort.

Mark, you're a bright guy, but you didn't think this one through.

Tilting at windmills

[SideshowBob]

There are no 'revolutionary business ideas'. For a century people have been conditioned to expect electronic media to be free, while print media has always been for-pay. The 'revolution' will be in changing those expectations. That just takes time.

I'd also add that electronic media hasn't caught up to paper media in the area of convenience. I can roll up a copy of the Economist and stick it in my back pocket and read it while I'm waiting in the doctor's office. To read the Economist.com I have to take a laptop (or at the very least a PDA) and I have to somehow get the articles downloaded onto it first or rely on wi-fi service wherever I'm going.