The Isolation of Innovation

Abstract

Charged to innovate, digital news organizations are creating intrapreneurial units by embedding startups within the newsroom. While these in-house innovation labs are intended to infuse experimentation and creativity across the newsroom, several barriers exist toward their success. This exploratory research, which features 20 in-depth interviews with news innovation leaders in the United States and Canada, examines how news intrapreneurship interfaces with three qualities of managerial change: newsroom leadership, organizational culture and innovation speed. Because of the bureaucratic nature of newsroom authority, ideas created in the intrapreneurial unit are ultimately isolated from the lifeblood of the broader news organization. The findings identify three layers of tension (executive, practitioner and internal) existing within the newsroom’s organizational structure that limits the spread of ideas developed within intrapreneurial units.

Keywords:

• disruptive innovation
• intrapreneurship
• journalism startups
• media economics
• newsroom management

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Declan Fahy for reading and providing feedback on early drafts of this work.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.