* Pay-per-play gaming and gambling
* Movies-on-demand
* Interactive advertising and shopping
* Email, internet and voting

Resonant interactivity via your television screen will rely on the return path, built in to set tops or mobiles and the ability to communicate via the TV or any of a range of other devices will be commonplace and the challenge will be to provide a consistent journey for the viewer. There are many technical and business hurdles to overcome before we really switch on the big ‘return channel’. One is simply that the current networks available on Digital Satellite and Digital Cable are swamped on occasion with large numbers of viewers interacting with popular iTV programmes.

The TV’s role will change and viewers will use a range of display devices for different activities and services delivered to them. There will be mobile, personal screens (mobiles/PDA’s) alongside the lean-forward work screens (PC’s) and sit-back sofa displays (TV’s).

We are also seeing the dawn of Personal TV, where what you want is captured for you for anytime viewing, Sky+ and TiVo for example. In the very near future there will be a multitude of ways that a viewer can store and carry content around with them, from small video clips for phone and PDA to high quality archiving of BBC programmes, sitting alongside their own home movies on large disks centrally located in the home.

After all is said and done – most of the viewers – some of the time – will need simply to be passive – to sit back and be told a ‘story’. The real challenge is being able to make interactive TV and other services as natural and engaging an experience as our greatest linear programming.

Engage: The most compelling part of traditional TV is the fact that most of the time it tells you a story – it is linear and carries you along with it. In the best TV – you feel part of the narrative.
Connect: One of the great benefits of interactive TV applications is the fact that they get the audience more involved by ‘connecting’ them to the action.

Synchronisation: This connection can take many forms but some of the most obvious are the play along quiz such as BBC’s very popular IQ quiz Test the Nation or the sing-a-long Karaoke in Top of the Pops. In all cases the interactive application is in perfect synchronisation with the TV programme (live or pre-recorded) and viewers are compelled to watch even more.

* Technical know how
* Design expertise
* Focused industry awareness

Using their experience in real world deployment they support and enable the editorial vision of the broadcaster.
But firstly a little innovation:
What is interactive innovation?
Invention or Innovation
Ed Roberts of MIT – “invention + exploitation = innovation”

* Invention, converting an idea into a new process or product.
* Innovation, extending the utilization of a product or process.

Bruce D. Merrifield US Assistant Sec of Commerce – “The three stages in the process of innovation: invention, translation and commercialization.”
TV networks Interactive – four levels of innovation
Note: the broadcaster is constantly being innovative by creating solutions and delivering ‘never before seen’ services to mass audiences – the worlds largest Interactive TV audience viewing on a range of vastly different platforms.

1 Maturity – Doing something we know about more often
If it works, if consumers use it and like it, do more of it. If appropriate do more on different subject matter or alternative genre.
The broadcaster’s iTV department is committed to volume production. Creating rich, usable interactive TV templates for deployment of a wide range of services across all genre.
To get to this point the department is innovating in ways to develop and deploy tools to allow production to deliver their editorial vision.
It is also collaborating with external providers to push towards ubiquitous of interactivity on all TV platforms.

2 Growing up – doing something we know about better
Incremental, ‘baby’ steps forward with existing service types, a gradual increase in the range of features adding editorial depth and increased user functionality.
The broadcaster’s iTV department provides enablers for editorial innovation – such as bespoke production tools, new service templates, innovative backend systems which in most cases have to be invented then exploited (=innovation)
“I liken the discussion to “normal science” versus “paradigm shift”. You don’t have to change the world to make an impact. Incremental innovations add value. Especially if they are continuous.
The Ability to Deliver New Value to a Customer. After all, it is not innovation until the customer says it is. While most of us have traditionally associated innovation with technology advance, in a free market innovation can be as simple as a new way of doing things or a new way to create customer satisfaction.”

3 Nurturing & playing with the new born – Doing something somewhat different
Experimenting, trialing and learning on newly emerged, Interactive platforms.
Identifying and creating solutions for immature but very promising new TV viewer platforms or technologies.
Enabling and building with production innovative, platform optimised services
The broadcaster’s iTV department deploys trial services on significant emerging TV platforms to real audiences, and with a phased approach, achieves a deeper understanding of the value of those services.
We are also challenged to help steer and collaborate with other departments ‘doing something somewhat different’ – there needs to be a focus in this, guidance, and a real learning outcome.

4 Giving birth – Doing something altogether different
“one definition of innovation, means doing things differently, exploring new territory, taking risks. There has to be a reason for rocking the boat, and that’s the vision of what could be…the challenge. The bigger the challenge and the commitment to it, the more energy the innovation efforts will have.”
The broadcaster’s iTV department is also challenged to be aware of departments ‘doing something altogether different’ and learn from their successes and failures.

Abridged © Gary Hayes 2004

Contents

* What needs to happen?
* What are the current issues?
* Cross-over
* Innovation process, Innovations Forum
* An effective body, Potential Forum Structure
* Speed of development, Projects delivery timescales
* User testing, user needs analysis and concept development studio
* Commission and filtering
* Staff numbers, Staff flow & cycles

What needs to happen?
To make sure new services and formats (on occasion linked to cutting edge technical innovation) can lead to real services we need:

* a structured, idea-nurturing, editorial development process
* a workable production chain of technical know how and editorial visualisation
* project continuity with no missing links in the chain
* flexible fast and slow track routes through the system

The requirements on all propositions:

* New ideas need to be given regular reality checks (even 10 year out ‘blue sky’)
* New ideas need to be regularly visualised and re-evaluated
* New formats need to be quantitatively tested
* Potential launch services need to be qualitatively user tested

What are the current issues?
At the moment within many network New Media areas there is a lack of clarity in many of the above elements. These are not the fault of particular departments, simply that formal development structures have not been implemented in a climate of uncertainty and ‘first generation’ launch platform dominated service development (NB: the current narrow band internet should also be seen as first generation).
Major issues are:

* Duplication and overlap. This document tries to identify some routes forward.
* Redundancy – some departments that historically led are not contributing to real market needs that has overtaken them
* Segmented development management structure where there is control over specific platforms & services but no unifying management (particularly in editorial areas) then fully convergent, 360 vision, new formats will not emerge.
* The ‘silo’ mentality – ‘we are the main innovation department, we therefore need the largest budget’, drives internal conflict.

Cross-platform
Another key issue to be addressed is how ‘new services’ can be synchronised with real platform development & output yet, have the ability to cross-existing platform boundaries. In other words groundbreaking new services will often be the combination or hybrid of individual platforms rather than programme ideas existing in isolation, aka joined-up thinking.
Without effective cross-platform management of budgets here new hybrid services will be bogged down in red tape. Without a clear editorial notion that a certain hybrid service has 30% narrow band component, 40% iTV component, 20% broadband etc how will hybrid service development budgeting work.
One real solution to this is devolving cross-platform development to a Head of Development or Cross-Platform services.

Innovation Process
The following process scenario and diagrams can be used to suggest a way forward, utilising the best features of existing departments and identifying missing links in the chain.
A first step in developing innovation departments and resources to meet the needs of development is to be aware of the key stages between ideas and services. This is a high level list of the stages a new service will have to go through. The important point of course, is that ALL departments linked to the project life cycle must subscribe to the level structure – without this, overlap, duplication and conflict results. We need to be able to say a project is at level 4 and everyone knows how far along the sequence it is.
This aids movement between departments and a removal of over-protective managers of projects. This is fair as long as the projects are tracked and credit given to departments that initiated or delivered for example. In fact this is one of the critical points to make here. Traditional linear production has a mature project structure, new media is often a collaboration of many teams – without effective tracking of how a project came to be there is a the danger of some teams becoming dis-enfranchised and not performing

12 steps to innovation:

1. CONCEPT – Initial proposition & idea
2. DEVELOPMENT – Content & editorial
3. PRESENTATION – Visualisation 1, text &/or graphic walk-though
4. FEASIBILITY – Technical & editorial
5. PROOF OF CONCEPT – Visualisation 2 – full storyboard with high level interactive spec
6. PROTOTYPE – platform look & feel visualisation – potential qualitative test
7. PILOT – Fully working main section/s – potential quantitative test
8. FUNCTIONAL SPECIFICATION – Preliminary editorial and tech specification
9. PLATFORM TRIALS – Final platform/s test build
10. FINAL SPEC – Final editorial and tech specification
11. BUILD – Real platform/s final build
12. DELIVERY – Launch and develop real service

Notes on the above:
Obviously stages 9-12 will potentially be the most time & resource consuming which can only be alleviated by an integrated ‘development’ front end.
Layers of:…

1. Commissioning & budget
2. Technical and editorial strategy
3. Asset production
4. Distribution
5. Partnerships/JV’s
6. Timescales/time-to-market
7. Budget

…need to be factored in of course these stand independently over the project life cycle and permeate each stage in varying degrees.
Visualisations as separate levels – It is important that visualisations, prototypes & pilots are seen as milestones and are pulled out as key levels – it is not until these are in place that real, valued decisions by others can be made on the nature of the proposition. They are required checkpoints on top of basic documentation.
Prototype (concept development) vs Rapid Format Dev – There is a key difference between prototyping and rapid development. Prototyping will often take place using tools that allow flexible and rapid visualisation which have no relation to the final platform – they are close approximations to the final service for purposes of testing concepts. Rapid Format Development takes this to the most critical stage that takes into account the real platform, develops real platform components of the service and produces a preliminary technical specification.
Work-flow analysis and flexibility built into the key areas will allow the above to adapt to changes in aspiration.

Innovations Forum
There will often need to be some considerable shrinking in some departments aspirations. Some innovation, which is purportedly 3 years out can still have a sizeable component that could reach a current market. There needs to be effective filtering and commissioning and pan-broadcaster review system otherwise the log-jam and confusion which currently exists will not go away. There needs (in this confused early market) to be less devolved commissioning otherwise departments will grow end-to-end development & delivery and duplication, overlap and wasted money will continue.

A potential innovations forum structure
An innovations forum with the following components in sequence: (these should be separate groups)

* a) Innovations Steering – market, finance and strategy, a steering group feeding key messages upstream to development areas. Highlighting the areas that need most development.
* b) Innovations Development – pan-broadcaster, sharing of new project ideas, grouping, training needs analysis etc, producer level
* c) Innovations Commissioning – pan-broadcaster, filtering new ideas worked up to prototype and delivered to output. Cutting down on duplication and wasted resources by labelling projects as mistakes, on-hold, requiring further effort and through to Rapid Development for market.

Without something close to the above as a real co-ordinating body there will be wasted time & money in duplication and frustrated, highly inventive people outside New Media having no home for their ideas.
This is often evident in broadcasters that projects have no where to go, they bounce around capable and in-efficient departments getting lost in the system while competitors rush ahead by having streamlined new ideas development.
As well as a Forum with managerial and steering task we need to fill two real holes in an end-to-end chain
1 – Awareness raising in sync with delivery
2 – Pan-development resources for ideas to be visualised and prototyped
Speed of development
There needs to be at least two alternate speeds of development. A fast track route for projects that are fast response to market forces and a slower route for propositions that require far more feasibility & editorial input.
‘Leap frog’ – fast track option 1
An idea can enter the sequence at any of three ‘commission’ points as long as it meets the criteria for entry. Given the demands on prototype and build resources there needs to be solid checkpoints put in place BEFORE a project can proceed.
Level 2 – In the case of development this will be filtered by Innovations Forum Steering Group (making sure the project fits with other work)
Level 5 – Proof of Concept, filtered by the Innovations Forum Development Group who look at projects from a production perspective and feed strongly into the experts group and knowledge sharing
Level 7 – Pilot – editorial and tech spec filtered Innovations Commissioning Group, effectively the final commission of new ideas before they are developed into a final service
Projects delivery timescales
There should be a sense throughout a propositions development lifetime that it can be:
‘parked’ – considered as needing time to ‘breath’ or simply low priority
‘left on the shelf’ – considered as a finished service but waiting for technology and audience penetration to reach threshold before continuing development or launch.
‘jettisoned’ – after user testing the project is cancelled. (Learning from this fed back)
Even when a proposition reaches an output group such as Rapid Format Development (which should imply almost final commission) there should be no concern if it falls into any of the three above scenarios.
User testing, user needs analysis and concept development studio
There is already talk within the new structure about a ‘user testing lab’. This will by implication need a resource to develop new concepts and services that need testing and should be cross-platform. There is a real synergy between this and two other proposals and there can be one and the same thing. The other two areas being:

1.
Training interactive lab – development workshop
2.
A prototyping resource for innovative projects

All three areas critically need a user test component (of course the user test lab goes without saying) and need to remain platform agnostic in the sense that platform heads can use the rapid format development and concept development as a resource – and co-fund as mentioned earlier.
Commission and filtering (need for cross-platform head)
There of course is an issue in how projects enter the development sequence at various points. In other words the commission budgets held by platform heads may conflict with the needs of cross-platform aspirations if there is not a cross-platform head.

Human Resource Issues
Staff numbers
For real innovation to flourish there needs to be dedicated staff and protection from delivery demands. If New Media, which is by nature a fast changing medium has over 500 staff then at least 40-60 or around (10%) of staff should be dedicated to innovation (see below for detail). These staff should be able to move freely between innovation and delivery (see next)

Staff flow & cycles
Staff should and can move around the innovation areas. This will allow innovation to also flow up-stream whereby staff on well managed short term attachment to innovation areas can bring reality to propositions but also stretch their own thinking. Staff flowing downstream can be grounded and gain a real sense of delivery requirements.

Abridged …©Gary Hayes 2004