MANFRED MOORMANN
... is the the head of Broadband Entertainment and Services for Telekom Austria in Vienna. Telekom Austria on its website says it has a 51 percent share of the broadband market in Austria. It offers both traditional and new-wave products, including Aon.tv, a PC-based Telco-TV, which Moormann helped launch. He also developed a community television product, Buntes Fernsehen Engerwitzdorf, which features user-generated content.
EKKEHART GERLACH
... is a managing director at the Deutsche Medienakademie Cologne, Germany.
ERIC KARSTENS
... is a project developer and research coordinator at the European Journalism Centre. He authored the standard reference book "Praxishandbuch Fernsehen," The Practical Television Handbook, and most recently, "Fernsehen digital Eine Einführung," Introduction to Digital Television. Among other teaching activities, he lectures in media economy to graduate students at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences and the Hamburg Media School.
STEFAN A. JENZOWSKY
... Since 2006 has been a partner at trommsdorf + drüner, innovation + marketing consultants GmbH. He has also worked as transformation manager at Siemens ICN Business Transformation Partners and was until 2004 responsible for the overall Siemens ICN Innovation Strategy, heading the Innovation Board Office and serving as vice president at Siemens Communications.
ROLLAND STRAUSS
... is a managing partner at Platte, Strauss & Partners, an extensive public relations firm. He is an expert in communication technology policy and regulation. During most of his industrial career, Strauss worked in the telecom industry.
DANIEL A.J. SOKOLOV
... is a Vienna-based journalist who covers telecommunications and stories out of the entire ICT sector. He supplements his long-standing experience in print and radio with daily online business. He has worked for the ORF future Zone and pressetext.europe but now works mainly for Heise Publishing House.
Innovation Journalism: Detecting Weak Signals
Maastricht - 26 July 2007 (Day 2)
"Establishing Innovation in ICT Industriesâ€
Innovation, Policy, Culture, Human Resources, Standards, Incumbent, InnovationJam, Working Models, Strategies, Public Private Partnership, Research
Video: Day Two
| Add Innovation Journalism Seminar - Day Two to your page |
Photos:
Presentations:
Michael Kamps on:
Innovation & Law
Ekkehart Gerlach on:
Innovation, Competence, Convergence
Suggested links:
Programme:
| 10:00 – 10:30 | Introduction David Nordfors, Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning Wilfried Rütten, Director, European Journalism Centre |
| 10:30 – 11:15 | Innovate or Go Stefan A. Jenzowsky, Trommsdorff + Drüner, Innovation + Marketing Consultants, Berlin. Former Vice President, Strate and Head of Business Innovation Siemens Communications |
| 11:15 – 11:45 | Innovation in Incumbent Industries Manfred Moormann, Head of Broadband Entertainment and Services, Telekom Austria |
| 11:45 – 12:15 | Innovation, Competence, Convergence Ekkehart Gerlach, Managing Director, Deutsche Medienakademie |
| 12:15 – 13:00 | Innovation in the ICT and Media Industries: Discussion Roundtable between Wilfried Runde, Stefan A. Jenzowsky, Manfred Moormann, Ekkehart Gerlach |
| 13:00 – 14:00 | Lunch break |
| 14:00 – 14:30 | European Strategies for Innovation Roland Strauss , European Innovation Dialogue, Strauss & Partners |
| 14:30 – 16:00 | Trends in Innovation Innovation and Law Michael Kamps, CMS Hasche Sigle New Media Regulation Frameworks Eric Karstens, European Journalism Centre Reporting Innovation / Innovation Reporting Daniel A.J. Sokolov, Journalist, Vienna |
| 16:00 – 16:30 | Coffee break |
| 16:30 – 17:30 | Conclusion and open talk David Nordfors, Wilfried Rütten, Stefan A. Jenzowsky, Manfred Moormann, Roland Strauss, Ekkehart Gerlach, Daniel Sokolov and others |
DAY TWO:
Stefan Jenzowsky clicked away on a giant television remote control as he discussed processes leading to convergences within media industries.
The most universal challenge facing these industries is deciding where to allocate money budgeted for improving market share, he said. The most profitable place for any media group to put its money, Jenzowsky said, is on emerging innovations and changes that concern vision missions. While giving a high return on investment, innovations can be difficult to put into practice because they often encounter resistance.
The result is that most companies don't put enough money in their research and development budget. New business models follow convergence, he said, one example being the growing industry of online gaming. Gaming acknowledges the shift of interest and time dedication that was once all for TV. Companies try to monitor early information which is conveyed through the new media in forms of blogs and then this information spreads and reaches traditional mass media. A successful monitoring of this early signals will help to assure a profitable investment, he said.
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Innovation is not the same thing as invention, said Manfred Moormann, the head of broadband entertainment and services at Telekom Austria, in a discussion of innovation in the telecom industry.
Innovation is foremost about finding economic applications for inventions, he said, citing an Austrian economist.
Moormann is best known for creating a platform for user-generated content in Engerwitzdorf, Austria. Users – the town includes about 8,500 people – are encouraged to create their own videos, which are then distributed on Telekom Austria's services. But Moormann said he today sometimes questions the project's true economic success, particularly in light of the worldwide impact YouTube has made.
The YouTube guys were bought out by Google, he quipped, “And I'm still working for Telekom Austria.”
Impact is an integral facet of innovation, Moormann said.
“Innovation has to have impact, otherwise it is no innovation,” he added. .
In the nine years Moormann has spent at Telekom Austria, he's seen its services go from mainly wireline to wireless. Finding the right combination of services for viewers in this changing environment is a constant challenge.“If you have the right services, you will have success,” he said.
The dichotomy between “digital immigrants,”and “digital natives,” presents an added challenge for companies dealing in mass media.
“There is a difference in whether you are young or old when it comes to media usage,” Moormann said.
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After 40 years of working in media, Ekkehart Gerlach knows that innovations are often underestimated at the moment of inception.
Even e-mail, he noted, was not initially recognized by many people as a revolutionary tool that would change communication.
Conversely, for some time, the impact of digital cameras was overestimated.
The challenge, then, is for journalists to be able to understand the meaning of new technological innovations and generate appropriate levels of media attention.
Journalists often get story ideas from each other, though, therefore further increasing risk of creating bubbles that in the end burst - revealing not innovation, but flops.
In the round-table discussion that followed, keynote speaker David Nordfors agreed with Gerlach, saying that journalists have a demand on themselves that they have to predict things, but they don’t have that ability. Their role is more to messengers who make people think about changes happening in society. That's why they have to be able to detect even weak signals of innovation. Instead of observing of what goes on around them, journalists should be actors who take part in innovation, Nordfors said. But this destroys the myth of unbiased journalism, according to discussion host Wilfried Runde. He said he wonders if journalists are covering relevant topics. He suggested that maybe the fact that people are reading more entertainment articles than news may illustrate this tendency.
Wilfred Ruetten talked about the fact that traditional journalists keep their sources very close to them, don’t want to share them. In this way, they can make a profit out of their knowledge.
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Laws governing new media can seem at times about as clear as mud – and the lawyers and lawmakers the proverbial sticks in that mud.
Michael Kamps, an attorney from CMS Hasche Sigle, a German law firm specialising in commercial law, tried to illuminate the ways in which the law addresses – occasionally in exciting fashion – issues arising in the areas of new media.
In the end, he advocated anyone seeking a more hopeful picture of innovations in law governing intellectual property seek out dialogue with creative legal scholars. “If you want to see lots of exciting things, go behind the scenes,” Kamps said.
Some scholars, like Cambridge's Rufus Pollock, today advocate for a 10-year limit on copyright. Kamps said there are some scholars who argue against the need for any copyright.
Certainly, he said, law are slow to change. But so too is the law a constantly changing body of work made by society – so, in the end, it can and will adapt.
“Law in most cases reacts rather than takes the initiative,”Kamps said. “Why is law so difficult? Because life is difficult, and so is the distribution of rights.”
At times, technologies and society's uses of them change so fast, there isn't commonly accepted legal terminology in place to even write laws – which can lead to more time in court.
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Eric Karstens
, a media consultant and expert in media regulation in the EU, showed that the media regulation situation in Europe is peculiar due to the varying positions of three main actors – the Commission, which has a market-oriented approach, the Council, which pushes for the sovereignty of the member states, and the Parliament, which tries to implement pluralism within EU countries. The biggest challenge at a political level is to try to confront the different opinions and develop a common media policy.
Karstens said that while regulatory legislation protects competition among media of member states, such legislation can also have a negative impact and stifle innovation.
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Fresh from a Founder's Meeting of the European Innovation Dialogue, Roland Strauss arrived in Maastricht to give an overview of the EID.
He discussed its mission and challenges before addressing the rather tepid temperature of innovation in Europe.
Strauss said he thinks the term innovation has a bad rap amongst everyday civilians.
“I think there is broad room to improve the image of innovation,”he said. “Those who deal with it say innovation is the most important thing for our future – but the citizens don't care.”
The mission of the EID – one of many groups trying to create networks of regional-level innovators in the interest of furthering their innovations and bringing these innovations to the EU level – is “to create a favourable legal and economic environment, an improved innovation support system, for closer collaboration among the innovation stakeholders, resulting in more and better innovation.”
Hopefully, Strauss said, the EID will be a one-stop shop for innovation – so key to achieving the goals laid out in the Lisbon Strategy. He spoke with great hope about developments in the works such as the European Institute of Technology, a European answer to MIT.
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Daniel Sokolov talked about the actual work of an innovation journalist. He covers tech and innovation news. He explained how is it possible for journalists to understand innovation processes. Sokolov pointed out the importance of talking about trends, trying to get a larger picture, crossing geographic borders. He said going into the communities helps to connect the dots of vertically-structured news beats. He also said that it is easier to spot innovation in other societies than our own, as everyday tend to pass unnoticed. But when an innovation – be it a new policy or technological improvement - is spotted in a faraway country – Sokolov covered Bangladesh and Namibia - it should be compared and confronted in other societies, thus creating a process of general advancement.