Retailers and publishers face creative disruption

I am currently in the middle of reading Simon Waldman’s book Creative Disruption, which looks at how organisations threatened by digitalisation can survive their changed environment.

I first read it when it was published in 2010, following some rave reviews at a digital publishing conference I had attended - Waldman, you see, was a significant member of the team that ran the digital business at the Guardian newspaper.

His take on the changes we have all witnessed - and continue to face - is particularly interesting. There are plenty of books, papers and articles which focus on the disrupters - the likes of Amazon, Asos and eBay. But Waldman prefers to focus on the businesses facing the disruption and what they need to do to survive.

Whilst he is a publisher by trade, he points out that retailers are amongst the sectors most exposed to these changes - and HMV is one of the prime examples he uses to illustrate his point.

The core message is that companies need to rethink their businesses as a whole, but, importantly, he talks of transforming your core - not walking away from it - through a careful process of controlled innovation.

This premise is an important one for media companies too. Retail Week, like many of the companies it covers, is on something of a journey. There is little doubt that the technologies that have disrupted the retail industry have impacted the media sector too. When I helped launch my first B2B digital magazine about 12 years ago, it was part of a move that signalled the end of centuries of publishing thinking based on the premise that print was the most effective and efficient way to get essential industry news to an audience.

However, changes to the digital world in the last few years have altered the landscape once again. B2B content is no longer hard to find. In fact, the challenge for the modern executive now is not how do I find my information, but who do I trust, where do I find quality and how do I ensure I am better informed than my competitors?

Retail Week is responding to these needs. We recognise the importance of delivering daily news that readers can trust, which ensures our audience is abreast of the latest events. But we also recognise our value lies in the ability to analyse these events, through a range of tools, columns and commentators, which deliver real insight for retailers on a daily basis.

Hopefully, you will have noticed some of this extra coverage coming online for subscribers over the last fortnight. But tomorrow is general merchandise bellwether Home Retail’s full year results and a quarterly update from Next. It’s often better to show than to tell, so we’ll be opening up the day’s coverage on Retail-week.com to all registered users to give you a glimpse of our response to our own creative disruption.