Read the full interactive report here
This project ran over a weekend to explore open media innovation as part of an emerging ecosystem of news startups.
The Medialab Session and Media Innovation Studio brought coders, business minds, entrepreneurs, students, journalism and media professionals from across Europe and America together for 48 hours. Using innovative brain storming and facilitation methods, and a series of workshops, we set out to build five media startups across one weekend. The teams pitched to a panel of expert Dragons to find a winning startup. The process was outputted live through multimedia and social media in order to make the ecosystem collaborative and open.
The event built on Medialab Sessions to date, allowing for findings that can feed into larger discussions around media business models online, and open media innovation processes, as a way to facilitate SME growth across a range of sectors. The UK Medialab Session built on three previous events. This groundwork allowed for the development of an innovation ecosystem, which could be accelerated by the dynamic business culture of the UK. The previous Playgrounds were in Nantes (30 participants, 4 teams, 2 new media launched see ), Paris (40 participants, 7 teams, 3 media launched see ) and Brussels (20 participants, 5 teams, 4 media launched).
What we found went deeper than the creation of a startup. The process shed new light on the process of media innovation, probing what open innovation means and what needs to happen to benefit the UK digital economy.
Dr Clare Cook 