Is Innovation the Answer?
Is "Innovation" the Answer?
Check out Part 1 here for those who missed it.
"We're Stuck." These are the first two words of an article I read this past week on the perils of recent, or the lack thereof, genuinely transformative innovations. The author of the piece, Professor Gladden Pappin (now THAT'S a name) of the University of Dallas, posits the theory that we have become so immersed in using the term "innovation" that it has become cheap and almost cliche. He uses the example of the iPhone. It was only new once, but Apple tells us that the next iPhone with the next cool widget is the ultimate innovation. And to shift gears to our innovators of the "content' space. Who here can argue that the Netflixes, the multiple "+'s" are innovations rather than just a modern-day version of the cable channels of the '80s and 90s? They've deduced us into believing that the use of the word itself conveys a newness that is worthy of our admiration. They convinced us that the adage "everything old is new" is a good thing.
So what does this mean for the future of the industry? It comes down to something Tim and I touched on during last week's Hollywood Breaks and Derek Thompson tackled in his fantastic article over at The Atlantic. We need to go back to inventing again and not just innovating. Take a look at this fascinating graph from Derek's article:
This graph showcases that most advances in science have only been incremental, and there have not been as many breakthroughs as before. The authors of the study that Mr.Thompson (no relation to my Hollywood Breaks co-host Tim) cites say that scientists only pursue work that will be popular among other scientists. What they call "the citation obsession." Thompson brilliantly states that "Hey, that chart looks like Hollywood." He writes:
"Driven by popularity metrics, scientists, like movie studios, are becoming more likely to tinker in proven domains than to pursue risky original projects that might bloom into new franchises. It's not that writers, directors, scientists, and researchers can't physically come up with new ideas. But rather that something in the air—something in our institutions, or our culture—was constraining the growth new ideas. In science, as in cinema, incrementalism is edging out exploration.
That last sentence is the killer: Incrementalism is edging out exploration. In other words, our version of innovation is edging out the invention. If not cheapened by rampant consumerism and ignorance of what might have worked in the past, innovation can be a good thing—a genuine improvement versus only tinkering around the edges. However, invention is desperately needed in the industry now, and the current leadership's theory of innovation will not get us there. Hollywood is indeed breaking, but there is also an unbelievable opportunity for the next imaginative invention to truly transform the entertainment experience and how we creators tell stories. I'll tackle those subjects in Part 3 and Part 4 in the next couple of weeks.
Hit or Misses
Full confession: I was not a fan of the first episode of the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, but my wife advocated giving it a chance, and kudos to her because it has become an incredibly entertaining show. I bring this up because Amazon has begun rolling out the promotional campaign for Season 4, and thus far, the campaign has been great. They started by releasing the first teaser focused on Maisel and then followed that up each subsequent day with another teaser focusing on another character. First off, hats off to PV for releasing content in a rapid-fire sequence. Secondly, the pieces allow scenes to play out and avoid the chopping cutting that has become so commonplace in trailers these days. Finally, each piece has what sounds like an original song that so perfectly speaks to each character. Check out the first one for yourself.
So kudos to the creative and strategy teams over at Amazon Prime Video for starting the campaign on such a high note. Let's see if they can keep it going to the release. Never an easy task.
Pages from the Commonplace Book
This week, we return to the Revolutionary Era and the Adams Family, Abigail Adams. The year is 1779, and her son, John Quincy, has sailed across the Atlantic with his father, John, and younger brother, Charles, as her husband embarks on his mission to France. The following is taken from a letter she wrote to John Quincy in January of 1780:
"It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed...The Habits of a vigorous mind are formed in the contending with difficulties. All History will convince you of this, and that wisdom and penetration are fruits of experience, not the Lessons of retirement and leisure.
Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes the Heart, then those qualities which would otherways lay dormant, wake into life, and form the Character of the Hero and the Statesman.
We're not all gunning to be heroes and statesmen, but her words still hold true. It's only in the refinery life with all its trials and tribulations where our true mettle is forged, virtues and all.
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