The Innovation Diaries

Slow news and the heat getting to journalists’ brains means that it’s time to put together lists of the most influential/cool/powerful people in media. Folks in advertising and TV will have been frantically scanning the MediaGuardian 100 in particular for leads, mates, or (most importantly) themselves.

At ?What If!, we’re much more interested in the alternative lists. For instance, Hai Media’s Lisa Devaney has broken ranks in her blog by focusing on innovators rather than influencers, many of whom operate in the digital space (surprise) . Meanwhile, The Hospital Club has put together its own alternative list, voted for by the public.

What this suggests is that the new power networks are defined by all of us and not by them - the old power structures of media and advertising. Influence has become an old school numbers game dictated by salary, age, employees, readership, viewership … all of that is blown. Instead, we have a long tail of innovators: the clubkids, knitting circles, flash mobsters, gamers, bloggers, weirdos, geeks, freaks, kids … whatever. For instance, within the London perfomance art scene, Lisa Lee’s Underconstruction night (namechecked by TimeOut this week!) has quietly helped launch the career of many a star of the current Performance Art explosion. And in street art, stencil originator Blek le Rat is finally getting his dues with a bestselling Thames & Hudson book.

As an innovation company, we’re watching this ‘Generation Next’ because their influence is obvious: it’s in the clubs, in social media, on the bus, on the street - where it matters.

Picture of the Underconstruction crew from TimeOut.