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Innovation has a Minimum Speed Limit

In the rapidly-changing technology and media landscape of today, there is one constant need – to do things better, faster, and cheaper than ever before.

That holds true for creative production as well as creative (and any other) business.

If you do not have the ability or the will to move fast, or adapt quickly, you are dead – you just might not know it yet.

Old media (not necessarily as a euphemism for all the old studios and networks – old media is a way of thinking, of managing, and of communication and awareness or lack thereof) is fighting this battle every day, and losing.

It’s losing to it’s phalanxes of executives, business affairs, legal affairs and insurance policies.

And it’s creating a huge opportunity for smaller, faster companies led by individuals who understand not on the minutiae of what it takes to make their product (and therefore be able to make it better/faster & cheaper), but who also actually understand and grasp what’s going on in this new world.

The moment for trying new things, new business models, new ways of integrating talented & experienced individuals is now.

Who’s going to take the opportunity and make it work?

Wait & see.

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It’s the Story, Stupid

If I had a nickel for everytime I’ve heard the phrase “content is king,” I’d be a very wealthy man.

Over the years, when I’ve been on projects in a meaningful creative role (which I can count on one hand, thus far), it always, always comes back to one thing for me – the story.

As Robert McKee puts it best “Story well-told.”

This isn’t existential. It isn’t debatable. Watching great films, or great televison, or even a great short film tells us this in visual media. A play, a book, a poem or a painting “well-told” all hold the same power.

The issue in the business is that there’s so much money to be made on simple “content” that we forget the things that ignite the passion and inspiration in us that a great story creates.

Instead we replace it with satisfaction at the power lunches, the nice offices, cars and homes, and “people we know” and the politics of power.

I’m trying to come to terms with how to continue furthering my own personal career and stick to the titular principle above as much as I can. Part of that will come from creating businesses and business opportunities that foster collaboration and innovation with new storytellers around the country and around the world.

I don’t yet know where that place will be, but I can tell you that I am passionate and excited about the prospects of what can be.

Some of the greatest storytellers in human history had nothing more than a few people gathered around to listen to them as they wove their masterful tales. No lights, no cameras, no special effects, no layers of executives and lawyers and agents and managers.

The industry system as we know it today by no means has a monopoly on talent, and by and large have chosen to forget the relevance of a well-told story, and replaced it with the “well-marketed” story.

Something different is coming.