copywritten for Blackbird published at Forbes
The technology industry has casually used the phrase
"next generation" for years without ever spelling out what it
actually means. "Next generation" is lazy marketing phraseology that
has come to simply mean an upgrade, the latest version, the newest iteration.
If it's not groundbreaking or innovative, no big deal. But in the age of Covid,
"next generation" is yesterday’s news.
The crushing blow to business caused by the pandemic means
companies must return stronger. There’s a pressing need to catch up on lost
revenue but without investing heavily. In the media industry, the pandemic has
also exposed the means to do this.
It needs leapfrog tech. Let’s define what that is.
What Is Leapfrog Technology?
Leapfrogging is when an actor starts from an inferior
position and overcomes the competition in one bound. It stands in contrast to
conventional modes of development that tend to be incremental, gradual and
evolutionary. It is typically a breakthrough event — an invention or
application of a new technology that creates the conditions for the leap to
occur. The idea has been studied as an economic model in which
countries or businesses can bypass key stages and hurdle past the opposition
into the lead.
The main use case is the widespread penetration of cell
phones throughout parts of Africa and Southeast Asia. Adoption of mobile
devices and mobile broadband took off rapidly in certain societies there
without having to take the intermediate steps of investment in infrastructure
like underground coaxial cabling. The introduction of wireless technology did
not depend on legacy hardware, allowing certain countries to catch up in the
field of digital communications.
According to Forbes contributor Francois Botha,
"By 2020, sub-Saharan Africa will have more than half a billion unique
mobile subscribers, making the continent the fastest growing area for mobile
technology, and establishing Africa as an emerging platform for social and
commercial innovation."
Similarly, thanks to leapfrog technology, the conditions are
now primed for the media and entertainment industry to vault out of the past.
The Status Quo Has Changed
Coronavirus has accelerated digital behaviors. In its Q3
2020 State of Streaming report (via TV Tech), Conviva estimates that
streaming video viewing time rose 57% globally, year-over-year.
Media owners from Walt Disney on down are restructuring
their entire output around direct-to-consumer services over the internet.
Watching people play video games has emerged as one of the biggest drivers of
online bandwidth. Overall viewing to Twitch has soared over 100%, year-over-year.
With all this comes demanding expectations from consumers
for better than broadcast quality. That means no delay, no glitches, superb
video and audio quality and, increasingly, the ability to personalize the
content.
Nor does it stop there. In short order, content owners and
network operators will look to monetize investment in 5G mobile networks by
offering real-time interactive experiences such as sports betting, multiple
choice of angles to watch a live event and ultra-high-definition virtual
reality.
Yet any such endeavor is critically undermined when reliant
on legacy production technology. Any setup based on hardware locked into
traditional facilities is fatally encumbered by inflexible and time-consuming
workflows. Remote collaboration — in which production crews can be located
separately from the event and even from each other to gain huge time and cost
efficiencies — is a non-starter with legacy gear.
If media has to be routed between production applications
over anything other than the internet, the outcome will be deleteriously
expensive.
The competition is waiting to pounce.
Producing exponentially more content and better content at
the speed which consumers demand is hard — if you don’t have leapfrog tech.
Leapfrog tech for the video production industry is software
tools and services that can be accessed in the cloud from literally any desktop
via a web browser. Leapfrog tech barely leaves a footprint in energy
consumption or processing power but delivers rich media to the user lightning
fast and at scale.
Writing On The Wall
There’s no magic here. There’s no secret recipe reserved for
an elite few. The answer lies in plain sight and uses the protocols and open
standards of the web.
Elaborating on the concept of leapfrogging, Nobel
prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz co-authored a paper
illustrating how a firm with an “arbitrarily small headstart can pre-empt its
rivals” by using R&D to jump ahead. Stiglitz suggested that any company
behind the play can use information to their advantage. They can use the
failures and successes exhibited in the market, see what works and what doesn’t
and skip the deployment of intermediate stages by adopting winning solutions to
catch up and overtake.
The biggest impact on the media industry's survival in 2021
will not be Covid-19. Even as we emerge from the pandemic, crowds return to
live events and work resumes to a degree of normality, the global and
individual response to saving the planet should move front and center.
That’s leapfrog tech.
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