OUT OF THE BOXPUSHING CREATIVITY FORWARD

Marieke Hermans (NPO) | TEDx TransmediaRome | September 30th 2011

I dont know if there is such a thing as an innovational gene

but I was born with it.

I’m always improving and making things better.

As innovation manager at the Dutch Public BroadcastingCompany

I work as an intermediate between creatives anddecisionmakers.

Everyday I am confronted with the happy creative power ofmedia professionals

and the difficulties they face trying to get their brilliant ideasto be taken into production.

I am fascinated with these dynamics of the creative process

Why are ok ideas taken into production and brilliant ones not?

How do you get the best idea to win?

Off course the competitive rules of evolution also apply to thiscreative process.

But I want to share with you my vision on why and how wecan become better at helping the brilliant ideas to win.

Storytellers look for a stage and in the past they chose us

For prime time was the place to be if you wanted to catch abig audience

But now the web is the stage to reach and interact with thatsame audience

Today’s storytellers are not only depending on PublicBroadcasting any more.

And I wonder if we are reacting in the right way to this effectof the digital revolution

This is what we do:

1. we explore new technologies

2. we try to understand audience on line behaviour

3. teach ourselves to extend our narratives

4. And we tell our decisionmakers to catch up:

So the good news is we’re moving.

But we need to speed up

For the next generation media consumers is quickly gainingcontrol over the remote

Here come’s Nafiesa…

we work in the interest of the public

The public, that’s our audience

in this confusing digital age, we need to realise impact

with journalistic, cultural and educational public content orelse we’re done for.

So not only do we need to speed up to catch up with ouryoung audience

We also need to focus on impact

For impact we need content,

For content we need storytellers

Therefore storytellers are the core value of Publicbroadcasting

We need to invest in this value

We need content creators with high credibility and madconvincing personalities

We need to attract this 2.0 talent now for they alreadystarted without us:

Using facebook, twitter and youtube as their platform

switching between tv, radio, audio, video, public andcommercial content

Easily connecting with their audience

They play with it and even make money doing so

For them media are the means to an end.

So, how do we get them

to choose us public broadcasting as their stage?

Imagine yourself being a young creative with the enormousdrive to tell a compelling story.

No, even better imagine yourself being the piece of paperwith his brilliant idea on it.

You try to get in the Walhalla of storytellers then this is whatyour up against:

Yes, we have become big institutions

stuck in matrix like structures and low cost productionmethods

That’s the change we need now

that’s the box we got stuck in

and let me tell you these young ones don’t have the patiencefor the elevator to come all the way down

We need to get ‘unstuck’…quickly

I try to convince my bosses to take ownership of this change:

speed up, open up

focus on impact

attract 2.0 storytelling talent

for starters I made this book for them

this off line succesful formula on paper

And in this book:

we connect and acknowledge 149 content creators all 2.0 andunder the age of 45 it

Why 149?

Dunbar, scientist who found out that we operate best ingroups of 150, without too much hassle or procedures

Tribes, army troops and factories like Gore Tex are based onthis principle.

We chose one less cause it’s always good to have room forone more

I am convinced that without this creative 2.0 media talentwe cannot take public content into the next phase of thedigital revolution.

Therefore I want to leave you with a question to ask yourselvesand to take home and ask your chief or boss:

Marieke Hermans (NPO)

marieke.hermans@omroep.nl

www.tvlab.nl | www.npox.nl