Andrew Davis: Sustaining innovation

3:32 PM in a chandelier-lit ballroom. Laptops everywhere. Andrew Davis, President of the American Press Intstitute is helping us cross the chasm of the innovator’s dilemma by talking about product innovation and obsolence. Gas lamps and electric light, bound encyclopedia sets and CD-Roms.
How does these truths about entering disruptive techologies apply to the media business?
Do they disrupt delivery systems or content?
Susan’s comment: What if they disrupt reputation? What if part of what blogs, social networks and eBay reputation have done is make non-big media voices far more credible–and networked–than they ever were before?
Davis says All the people who call in to Rush Limbaugh are essentially blogging Rush–but does that make them journalists?
Davis also says: People use media to know things, be entertained, to buy things, to sell things, and to enable work.
He asks if we can think of anything else and Sandy Close adds The sense of a community, of feeling visible by having media that reflects you is perhaps the most important thing of all.

(Aside: Man, I LIKE Sandy Close–she has a broad, informed perspective that expands this conversation…And we need that.)

3:48 in a chandelier-lit ballroom. Laptops everywhere 2 more discussions to go.