Hulu Fast Becoming a Key Part of a New Industry Architecture

by Idris Mootee

Here are pictures of the Idea Couture team running several days of long sessions at the MIT. Jeff, Partick, Adam and Cheesan were happy with the progress to date and I am so looking forward to see the first milestone. It is just a great project and a great client/partner. Everyone is excited.

While we are on MIT, I came across some early research from MIT Media Lab on "Emotionally Reactive Television", it is a very interesting concept. The idea was from the time TV was created, watching TV is considered as a static activity. TV audiences have very limited choices to interact with TV, such as turning on/off, increasing/decreasing volume, and traversing among different channels. The working thesis is that TV program should have social responses to people, such as affording and accepting audience's emotional feeling with the growth of technologies. This paper presents HiTV, an Emotionally-Reactive TV system using a digitally augmented soft ball as affect-input interfaces that can amplify TV program's video/audio signals. HiTV transforms the original video and audio into effects that intrigue and fulfill people's emotional expectation. This is a super cool idea.



Some people think media should all be free. Just imagine a world where every form of media as we know is accessible for free. Is this the future? We're reaching an industry breakpoint in the world of media, fight between pirates, broadcasters, entertainment labels, demanding consumers heats up, the stakes will get higher, and higher.

The convergence of PC and TV will accelerate. I've participated in debates and forums around the three screen convergence scenario in the telec industry. That means one provider who can deliver a converged/integrated video/entertainment experience to the TV, PC, and mobile device. This is the telcos' dream. The idea is, you're watching something on your TV and you have to leave, you can continue to watch it on the go or so you pause it. Is this something we all wanted?



Analyst Laura Martin (Soleil Securities) crafted a worst case scenario for broadcast media. Martin believes Hulu will wipe out the network television business as we know it. In a recent report, she estimates that the online video hub will cost TV networks $920 per viewer in advertising if their audiences are cannibalized by Hulu. She believes the bulk of viewing on Hulu is indeed taking eyeballs from TV. It definitely makes some sense but there are still many wild cards.

Earlier In May she warned that the entire $300 billion market valuation of the television industry is threatened by the shift of programming from TV to the Web. Spearheading the overthrow of TV-as-we-know-it is Hulu, the premium video site backed by NBC Universal, News Corp. and Walt Disney that offers content from the 120 partners. Martin is very confident that Hulu will succeed in the long term. With more than 38 million monthly viewers who watched 457 million streamed videos, it is 6th-most-visited video site, ahead of competitors like AOL, CBS Interactive and the Turner Network, according to comScore.


Hulu is seeding the value migration for its TV network creators as more content that becomes available on Hulu, the more likely it is that consumers will cut the cable cord altogether. Together with that trend is the less attractive economics of online video to advertisers, which offers higher CPMs but fewer ads. The industry estimates that Hulu runs four ads each hour at a $50 CPM compared to 32 ads during each hour of programming on TV at a $35 CPM. ($1,120-$200 = $920). Hulu did not disclosed actual ad sales or ad rates.



The TV everywhere idea is not new. Except it is getting real. I am not sure if it is so simple. There is a lot of uncertainty about the speed of deployment of new technologies and services, and of their adoption driven innovative user experience design. Hence the implications for spectrum demand and management of all these changes are far from clear; and convergence raises the fundamental question of whether current service definitions will make any sense by the end of next year.

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Idris Mootee is the CEO of idea couture, a strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is the author of four books, tens of published articles, and a frequent speaker at business conferences and executive retreats.

Innovation Through Design Thinking

Here is another video from Tim Brown of IDEO, this one is "Innovation Through Design Thinking" from a visit to MIT (skip ahead three minutes if you're pressed for time):





According to IDEO, Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation.

This video highlights how companies use design thinking in their businesses, from Motorola thinking about strategy to P&G thinking about moving into new markets to Microsoft thinking about the application of new technology.

I've always believed that:

Innovation = Invention + Insights

It was good to see Tim reinforce this core belief when he says "Insights are the fuel for innovation."

Some of the key things to consider when looking to use design thinking as an approach to innovation:

1. Analogous situations (example: hospital operating teams versus pit crews)


2. Insights come from the extreme users (example: working with kids on cooking tool project)


3. Getting out there to look, listen, try


4. Building to think - prototyping for thinking and learning not as an outcome of what you've done


5. Using storytelling to develop and express ideas


6. Design thinking is not just about methodology, it is just as much about culture

Finally I'd like to leave you with one thought from the video:

"Many great ideas fail not because they were not great ideas, but because they could not navigate the politics and processes of the organization."


What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Sixth Sense

You may have seen a video I posted about a wearable computer designed by some MIT students.

I just came across a TED talk from Pattie Maes that explains the details of the innovation you saw in that video, while also showcasing more of what the technology is capable of and what the device costs to build with off the shelf parts. It's definitely worth a look:



Do you think people will want to wear something like this around?
(post a comment)

@innovate

David Merrill Demonstrates Siftables - The Toy Blocks That Think

Here is an interesting video of MIT grad student David Merrill demonstrating Siftables -- cookie-sized, computerized tiles you can stack and shuffle in your hands. These future-toys can do math, play music, and talk to their friends, too. Does this technology have any promise as an alternative human-computer interface?

Check it out:



What do you think?

@innovate

Interesting Wearable Computer from MIT Students

Here is an interesting video of a wearable computer from MIT students.

Enjoy!



What do you think?

@innovate

BiF-4 Insights - Joe Coughlin - Age Lab (MIT)

We are going to be living longer but we haven't thought about how.

How do we realign individual behavior or expectations?

We enjoy living longer because we can do things.

How will transportation evolve?

• 70% of Americans live with no access to public transport or a lousy level of service

How do we reinvent caregiving and self-care?

How are we going to define a flexible workplace and older people choosing to do a kind of work they haven't done?

How are we going to keep older workers trained and available?

For more information on the talk, go here.