Hollywood's Quest for Innovation

Business week article about Hollywoods inability to innovate. The focus is on Tinsel Town, but the points run across industries:

"Innovators can be irritants. Innovators are rebels. They disrupt the status quo, threaten existing models, and frankly, put some people out of business. Innovators are like sand in an oyster. But don't banish the irritant. Listen. Because in the end, they might produce a pearl.

Embrace failure...Embrace risk-taking and opportunity to allow new models to emerge. Ultimately, learning from mistakes is just as important to the innovation process as developing the business model.

No star system. We love the myth of the "lone innovator" who has a stroke of genius in the shower. But big innovations—the kind that seismically affect our lives—almost never come from one person alone...Let's build on our existing infrastructure and value every contributor as we lead the way.

Innovation doesn't always mean immediate profit. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the key developer behind the World Wide Web, is no mogul. And Sean Fanning, who single-handedly turned the music industry upside down, didn't create Napster to make money. But these innovations changed the game and opened up revenue streams unimaginable even a decade ago.

You don't have to be first, but you do have to adapt. Even if you're not first, it's not too late to come out on top. The concept for a Windows interface on PCs didn't come from Microsoft (MSFT) or Apple (AAPL). It came from Xerox PARC (XRX). Be receptive to new ideas, even if it may seem at first as if they will put you out of business.

Small is the new big. High-growth startups often unleash the most radical innovations. They don't worry too much about traditional models... we should encourage a strong ecosystem where established corporations and the "creatives" collaborate with entrepreneurs.