Technological change and forms of innovation in consumer magazine publishing: a UK-based study

Abstract

This paper presents the results of research undertaken between 2002 and 2004 into the impact of technological change on the UK consumer magazine industry. The findings highlight patterns of innovation, both in the range of products (most notably monthly magazine titles) and the structure of organisations and work practices, which have tended to elude much of the contemporary debate within the ‘cultural industries’ approach adopted in the media studies discipline. Instead, our analysis makes use of insights from the innovation literature to highlight the impact of technological discontinuities on the capabilities of both incumbent firms and new entrants. It also highlights the important and growing role that is being played in innovation-led industries through the adoption of organisational practices that find their origins in the traditions of project-based firms.

Keywords:

• project-based organisations
• product innovation
• cultural industries
• consumer magazines
• SMEs
• desk-top publishing (DTP)
• IPC magazine
• EMAP plc

Acknowledgements

This paper forms part of the research undertaken with the support of an institutional grant by the Leverhulme Trust No. F/00 353/A.

Notes

1. See Garnham (1990). Three features of the cultural industries approach – deregulation, concentration and globalisation – have provided the main threads linking writers in this tradition. For recent expositions, see Hesmondhalgh (2002) and Bustamante (2004).

2. The idea that increased global integration, of the type witnessed in the popular magazine industry since the 1990s, does not necessarily equate with increased global concentration has been made recently by Ghemawat and Ghadar (2006).

3. Interview respondents with experience of this period stressed this as a particular factor inhibiting innovation, and thus reflect contemporary reports such as those published by the Price Commission (1978) and the Royal Commission on the Press (1977).

4. See http://www.magforum.com/mens.htm (last accessed 24 April 2006).

5. Cox et al. (2002), for example, detail the role of the final consumer in grocery retail innovation networks.