The Future of Entertainment

Also from Recognize Design, a link through to Marketallica where there is a great mind map of forces shaping the future of entertainment. I have never been a fan of mind maps as a tool for creative thinking … but this one has pulled together some interesting pieces of information.

And as I began to think about it a little more, it made me think about what works and what does not work. It made me really think about the future of entertainment — what will work and what will not. Or, I guess, what is working now, and what is not.

There has been a bit of comment flying around since over the Agency.com/Subway "viral" pitch … with a focus on the BIG idea. David Armano has followed it up with some good digging into the need for BIG execution … but it seems to me that the problem is not necessarily with the gap between idea and execution, but too simplistic a choice of execution. It comes right back to innovation and the need to be able to pull apart media and technology and creative processes so that they can be successfully be rebuilt in a NEW way.

That is what I mean (I think) when I talk about innovation being HARD. We can’t just take one old form and apply it to a new distribution model. We can’t just rely on the BIG idea … because when a big idea gains momentum, you can lose the capacity to DELIVER it. It is not the idea that is important — it is whether it works.

S.