Reelist: Duplicity, Action Movie for the Corporate Mind
In Duplicity, Tony Gilroy’s latest film – think the Bourne trilogy scripter and Michael Clayton writer-director – CIA officer Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts) and MI6 agent Ray Koval (Clive Owen) have left the world of government intelligence to cash in on the highly profitable cold war raging between two rival multinational corporations. Their mission: secure the formula for an over-the-counter consumer drug. A sophisticated romantic thriller, Duplicity engages the corporate mind while weaving in an espionage anti-script. What, however, does Duplicity do for innovation? Read more >>
Innovation Must-Reads in Magazines
Reviewing Portfolio and Fast Company – our two favorite innovation/business intelligence-oriented magazines – this month, some novel reads:
Boy Wonder: Chris Hughes’ first two acts – creating Facebook and launching Barack Obama online. The evolution of constructive social networking that actually creates value.- Maximum Security – Best ways to protect your position and jobs to be in over the next decade, per exec-search firm Korn/Ferry.
- Lululemon’s Cult of Selling – An internal employee constitution, 900+ yoga-teacher evangelists, and a required office read in Oprah-endorsed book The Secret.
- The Steve Jobs Economy – Worth $5.7B individually, Mr. Jobs’ worth to Apple is estimated at a staggering $30.8B.
- What Should I Do with My Life, Now? – Po Bronson’s re-take on the soul/career-search, knocking down 7 fallacies in the 6 years since his original book was published.
- All Apologies – Kurt Cobain’s music isn’t finding the same licensing opportunities as one would expect. With only $50k from Guitar Hero (versus $5M to Aerosmith) and $50M to Courtney Love, time to review the math. Read more >>
Anti-Studio: Theatrical Drives Theatrical, Not DVD As Usual
Is DVD on the downturn? During a recent lunch with one of my favorite studio digital media chiefs, we discussed the future of home entertainment – DVDs, Blu-Ray, Netflix, hulu, On Demand, digital downloads, you get the basic idea. We mused what the return would be in the next year or two when more of the consumer world is looking for at-home (“digital home”) entertainment, and not tuned into buying packaged DVDs or renting from brick-and-mortars like Blockbuster. Do people actually still buy and rent this way still, you ask? Yes, but they’re moving towards the $4 on-demand, 24-hour window rental – which is 1/4 what studios are used to based on the current retail environment. So how do they survive? Read more >>
The Launch of Twitterbook
Much of the social media news in the past couple of weeks has focused on Facebook’s release of a number of new features. Some of the features have been welcomed, while one in particular has garnered most of the attention and criticism.
Arianna Huffington: New(s) Media Harbinger
As the ‘Rocky Mountain’ presses around the nation – i.e., every print newspaper and magazine – struggle to survive and fend off shutting down their presses, Arianna Huffington’s “HuffPo” bet looks more and more like the innovative news (and new) media play. With relatively resilient traffic – even after a political win in the last national elections (which could have been a political precipice in terms of traffic) – Huffington looks to be the news aggregation model to beat or partner with these days. While she is an elegant chief evangelist for HuffPo, her time as a “New Medici” to really crow is now. Read more >>
Forbes Dropping Billionaires with Few Overperformers
A year of steady losses. Of the 793 billionaires on Forbes’ 2009 Billionaire List, 656 lost money while 44 surprisingly added multi-millions in the downturn. Bill Gates returned to the top position ($40B net worth, down $18B) with Warren Buffett ($37B, down $25B) and Carlos Slim ($35B, down $25B) changing the first three seats. From a list of 1,125 billionaires recently, and $1.4T (that’s “trillion“) lost, we’ll look at a few of the past year’s success stories – and offer discussion and links to how those few overperformed. Read more >>
Tim Armstrong Leaves Google to Innovate AOL
Breaking: The portal days are a-changing … again. Tim Armstrong, President of Google Sales, is now Chairman and CEO of AOL, a Time Warner company. With some younger and less traditional (cable) media blood. Borrowing from the Google thinkbank, Jeffrey Bewkes from Time Warner is trying to reconstitute AOL with fresh leadership. Definitely a “New Medici,” Armstrong is supremely ad/sales based, so it will be interesting to watch what level of new product definition comes out of Google – versus reviving its search (currently Googlized). As Google’s former president of the Americas operations and senior vice president, overseeing North and Latin America – and an investor/former chairman of Associated Content, Patch.com and FitPlanet, Armstrong has to redefine what AOL means to a marketplace of users looking for fresh content and ads. Can he reinvent advertising like Google reinvented search? Read more >>
The Blogfire of the Vanities
If Sherman McCoy (think Tom Hanks in the disastrous feature) was a “Master of the Universe” – who would that “Master” be in the blog world? Would it be a Nick Denton, Arianna Huffington, Michael Arrington, Om Malik, Henry Blodget or another? While The Bonfire of the Vanities was a bestseller for its generation, a “Blogfire” could be interpreted as the next generation – or “New Medici” – of innovative publishers who challenge mainstream media newspapers, magazines, tabloids and even television market share. Read more >>
Recent Innovation Jobs
Who knew the economy was tanking, and yet there are jobs still out there:
Director, Business Development at Lucasfilm- Executive Director, Marketing at MySpace Music
- Director, Entertainment Publicity at Lucasfilm
- Story Artist at Pixar Animation Studios
- Vice President, Digital Marketing at Fox Filmed Entertainment
- Entertainment Product Manager at CBS Mobile Entertainment
- Digital Campaign Dev&Ops Manager at Participant Media
Check them out at New Medici Jobs… We’ll also be highlighting the most innovative headhunters/recruiters in the media+lifestyle market. Submit your favorites to info [at] newmedici.com.
Reelist: The ABCs of Film Clichés
At Reelist: it made sense to update the clichés behind so many over-clichéd titles. What with Hollywood pursuing more big-budget films every year, there are mass-targeting efforts underfoot to mainstream audiences to these bromide-heavy, ‘tentpole’ releases:
Aliens: Aliens have just one, singular culture – same language, religion, clothes – whichever planet they herald from. They rarely come in peace, and never blow up Earth when they lose ground. They typically come back for those who have been left behind, no matter the risk. Read more >>
Twitter Vanity and Twitter Squatters
How much is your Twitter account name worth (not your Twitter following or value of Twits) to you? As an individual, a personality/ celeb or a real brand? I recently took a drive through the oh-so-simple registration, and there’s still a lot of top level twits (TLTs?) available. Remember all of those domain names you couldn’t buy because domain squatters were holding them ransom? Well, my prediction is that the great land grab – this time around a kind of Twitfest Destiny – is back. The year of the Twitter squatters (“Twatters”) is upon us. Read more >>
MySpace on the Bounty
No mutiny here actually, but we like the pun – today, MySpace’s COO and SVPs of Engineering + Product Strategy jumped off the boat. Noted as a “rising star,” 27-year-old Amit Kapur (MySpace’s COO) is leaving for a start-up after 13 months at the social network portal. In charge of global ops, it’s a fresh turn for Kapur; and a dynamic story of an acquired start-up supporting player turning into a new, untethered, start-up featured role. Think Googler turned Xoogler metaphor. Read more >>