Innovation & Disruption

In response to the growing tendency towards short-form content and 140-character length snippets, Medium established itself as a destination for thought pieces and long-form articles. This case from Robert Siegel and Matthew Saucedo takes a look inside the challenges facing Medium’s leadership team as they strive to build a successful digital media company and develop a sustainable monetization model. As journalism innovates, can Medium serve as a noteworthy model for publishing in the digital age?

One of the recurring themes we heard coming out of our Future of Advertising and Publishing Forum was the rise of audio and voice-assisted devices in the role of journalism. It is becoming increasingly clear that this is “the next big thing” in the realm of media consumption, and former Nieman Lab fellow Trushar Barot highlights the current state of this growing trend. Barot’s takeaways? News orgs need to be doing more to prepare for the implications of this disruptive technology.

It’s clear that the media landscape is rapidly changing. But how do companies actually maneuver through the digital transformation in their own industries? Perhaps no one is better equipped to answer this question than the panel of experts at our Future Assembly conference this past April. In this talk, Professor Bharat Anand speaks with Nicco Mele of the Shorenstein Center, Jake Shapiro of Radio Public (and formerly PRX), and Justin Williams of Turner Broadcasting about how digital has impacted such industries as newspapers, television, and radio. The takeaways may just surprise you!

Professor Bharat Anand offers some germane and timely advice for media companies (hint: all companies are media companies now) in the digital age. Namely, Anand revisits newspapers and reveals some surprising facts about what really caused the industry’s decline. Professor Anand’s insights are useful for anyone looking to play in the digital landscape and leverage the power of connections to develop profitable business models and avoid falling into the “content trap.”

In spring 2015, Matt Tucker, the Digital Initiative platform manager, interviewed Laura Day, a research fellow  in Professor Clay Christensen’s Forum for Growth and Innovation at HBS from June 2014 to October 2015.  Tucker: What was your motivation in going to CES?

Rethink everything, or risk repeating the mistake of the transition from radio to TV “How many of you remember any mobile ad that you’ve seen in the last month?” When Harvard Business School Professor Sunil Gupta asked this question at the Digital Initiative Summit in March 2015, not one hand went up. “We’ve basically taken the […]

Professor Karim Lakhani, co-chair of the 2016 Open and User Innovation Conference, talks with Matt Tucker about how people outside the traditional boundaries of firms are radically changing the innovation process. Tucker: Thanks for taking the time to talk to me about Revolutionizing Innovation. It’s a new book that you’ve edited with Dietmar Harhoff that […]

Written by Mohit Mittal, HBS ’17. This post was originally published on the Digital Initiative’s classroom blogging platform. Introduced as a messaging app in 2011 by Tencent, WeChat has evolved into lifestyle platform for users in China. With ~850 million monthly active users, it now offers to its users what Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, Venmo, Grubhub, […]

musica.ly was one of the hottest apps of 2015 and 2016 — and hasn’t left the App Store Top 40 ever since. Are its 15-second videos a one-hit wonder, or are they here to stay?

Presented at the Digital Initiative 2017 Future Assembly, in this flash talk, Richard Dulude from Underscore VC, explores problems with adopting the technology of VR and possible ways to address these challenges.