Here's my response to a discussion titled 'Can E-readers and Tablets Save the News?' on Mashable: 

A good question to ask is: "Is pay-for-publishing for digital content a valid, sustainable business model?' My guess leans more toward 'yes' than 'no'. 

Books will work in a controlled, DRM world a la iTunes, but will see some piracy and/or cracked devices - this cannot be avoided.

Magazines will be multimedia app-based offerings similar to what Sports Illustrated has proposed and Wired magazine has recently developed. 

News only? I doubt it. Big media companies better be quick to the 'value add' portion of their offering or they will die a quick death.

In conclusion, the news information share will be (and should be) free, while the creation of new material in itself will fall into a paid, semi-controlled category.

This series of posts will detail why innovation continues to be the most important aspect of business growth, especially in today’s flat business world.

The advent of the internet and the freedom with which information travels today has leveled the business playing field, therefore it must be understood that creativity and innovation have become increasingly valuable for future business growth.

Why should I care?

Why is this whole attention economy and it’s relationship to innovation important to you? Because we’re talking about how to engage the mind of your average customer. 

For instance, the average consumer is spending the majority of their recreational time online, doing the exact same thing he or she used to do pre-Internet, watching video, playing, reading researching, etc. The difference now is that they have a mobile phone, browser windows open, music playing - among other things. 

So the customer’s ‘attention’ is relatively scarce and developing offerings that break through and deliver is essential for business growth. Innovative packaged products will need to not only be developed, they will need to bake the marketing message into the delivered solution as much as possible because return business will be much harder to come by. 

The competition

Contrast today’s dilemma with straight-forward advertising offerings delivered in the past. What did a magazine ad, tv spot or billboard have to compete with? Maybe one other form of media such as a magazine ad competing with a TV spot, but nothing close to the level of noise that is present today.

Websites today are quickly incorporating a lot more video content. This is not your typical staged advertising delivery but much more an opportunity to showcase the ideas of the company, the offering and how it all works. Why? Because they know their audience doesn’t have the time or isn’t in that frame of mind to begin with. 

Whether you are aware of it or you can quantify it or not, this is happening to your business customer too. B2Bers have got it a little easier, but they still have major hurdles to clear in this flat business world too. Understanding how to differentiate and gain attention while competing with a myriad of similar companies is no small task.

If we go back in time through history and examine the innovations of media (written word, printing press, radio, television, etc.) and how they changed not only the delivery of information but the whole way of life itself, you can see that it’s not really possible to overstate the importance of where we stand today.

Part 4 coming tomorrow.