ICT 2015, Lisbon, 21 October
Nina Klein
Associate Partner
Frankfurt Book Fair
What do European book publishers need to boost innovation?
1. More knowledge about the publishing sector‘s innovation needs! § book publishing = one of the biggest creative industries in
Europe § similarities & synergies with adjacent creative content sectors
like press, film, games, animation, design, illustration (media convergence)
§ small scale structure = diversity and lots of ideas, lots of start-ups
§ Low barriers to entry = expanding universe of publishing, with new entrants both big, small and micro-sized
§ At the same time, the big and huge players transform themselves into giants (media concentration)
1. More knowledge about the publishing sector‘s innovation needs! A first Survey by the EU-funded project Technology and Innovation for Smart Publishing (TISP) in 2014: What do book publishers need in order to innovate? How can the EU support research and innovation?
Twitter @tispnetwork #FBF15 #tispnet
www.smartbook-tisp.eu
1. ... over 1000 European publishers were contacted in the TISP survey, over 120 responded and the result was:
More than three quarters of the respondents currently develop new products and services (77 %) 67% of the respondents claimed that they would like to get „involved in a collaborative approach, e.g. an R&D project in cooperation with other European companies and research institutions”. ... but only 6% do so. ... Why is that so?
1. ... and what are the greatest obstacles to innovation?
1. ...and what are the innovation areas ranked most important?
The areas with the highest average rating between 1 (not important) and 6 (very important) are • Digital distribution [4,92], • File formats
(EPUB, PDF, .azw, KF 8, ibooks etc.) [4,88], • Interactive content [4,78], • Multimedia content production (video, audio, AR, interactive etc.) [4,7], • E-commerce [4,66]
1. ...still, this is just the first insight.... ... and there need to be more structured research about the innovation needs of European publishers... more in the sense of: • quantitative studies • focussing not only on book publishing, but also on adjacent creative industries like newspaper, magazines, games and film • focussing on the biggest obstacles for innovation mentioned
in the study: - lack of access to ICT networks - lack of access to infrastructure - lack of access to ICT research
2. What is certainly needed: Easy „docking stations“ between research institutions & publishing! Two examples: iminds, a Flanders digital research & incubation institute: offers low threshhold R&D&I programmes for SMEs – with a focus on media companies – we need more of that. Cap Digital, a cluster organisation based in Paris, has just become the European home of the European Digital Reading Lab, which promotes EPUB and open web standards. The French government and industry stakeholders funded this with 1,5 mio. Euro. – we need more of that.
Creative
Industries Clusters
Book publishing industry
Policy
Research institutions
Thank you for your attention... And: what‘s your opinion?