How open is innovation at public broadcasters?
Today we discuss Open Innovation (OI) at public broadcasting companies in Germany. A topic that has not really been dealt with up until now. As part of Sophie's research, she tried to answer two questions:
“To what extent does public broadcasting practice OI?”
“Which requirements does public broadcasting need to fulfill in order to be able to optimally implement OI?”
Large public broadcasting firms have the financial means to look beyond company boundaries and try out different innovation practices but because of their size, there are still many structures slowing them down, flat hierarchies and systematic knowledge management is difficult to establish.
Small public broadcasting firms have an open corporate culture, in which internal knowledge exchange is a matter of course and necessary. Hierarchies are sometimes less pronounced, which means that managers are much closer to the editors. However, they lack the means and influence to transfer this exchange of knowledge to externals or to other broadcasting firms and make a difference.
A very homogeneous workforce in terms of education and social background.
Inhibitions to move outside the public-broadcasting cosmos.
BUT
Tendencies that the public broadcasters open up, begin to work in an interdisciplinary way and think outside the box, can be found.
The focus of the new offerings is increasingly on social media which has a positive effect on the possibilities of conducting OI together with the users.
Integrating a systematic OI strategy and also connecting it to HR. It is important to create a conducive environment for the people to engage in OI.
More diversity within the staff. Building more cross functional teams with people with different cultural and functional backgrounds, education, age and gender.
