BBC Innovation Labs
I attended the Birmingham launch event for the BBC Innovation Labs – a kind of Geek-Idol meets Dragons-Domain for web 2.0 app developers and new media producers.
As part of the beeb’s ongoing remit to evolve and serve license fee payers into the digital era, it is undergoing much structural reform and is keeping close tabs on the way social networking sites such as myspace and flickr are altering user behavior and interaction.
The open day introduced the objectives of the scheme and the opportunity to have a dry-run to pitch ideas to the interactive commissioners.
BBC commissioners working across all areas of new media have created a series of briefs and are inviting independent companies to pitch ideas for them. The group of successful applicants will then spend a (paid:) week working with key BBC staff and mentors to develop the idea into a killer pitch which is presented to the commissioners on the final day. IP is retained by the independent but the BBC get first dibs at developing the idea if they really like it.
An interesting aspect to the day and the application process is the use of Stanford Institute of Research’s discipline of innovation. SRI, who incidentally precede MIT by some margin, have devised this structured methodology for identifying innovation, worth considering in all aspects of creative industry, product and service development.
All that remains is that elusive idea . .
