Gerd leonard makes a really good question in his blog: Google Fast Flip – why did this innovation not come from the magazine publishers, themselves? He is also giving an answer: “many publishers don’t seem to want to actually collaborate with each other”. In fact, there is no point in competing against other players in software. Newspapers did not compete in the technology when printing, but they are trying to do it now. This is, because, as said by the report we talked about before we have missed the strategic focus to compete in the channel not in the content. But, this point can be further developed.

What is probably and strategically more important, since the risk innovation can be left to pure players and innovators while media go back to core and concentrate in contents (I know, scandalous to say that) is to assume, admit, recognize the good idea, and “adopt” it. Since first mover advantage is not that real (MySpace has been passed by Facebook and now they say Facebook may be under Twitter), a key accelerator is to  quickly emulate good ideas and innovations. Of course, a Lab made under collaboration and shared risks for publishers. In other words, no so much innovate as quickly detecting and adopting innovations. Nearly as quick as media contents are used by aggregators.

…by the way, this innovation is not coming from Google,  Zinio and others have been doing it for years.

Fast Flip, a way of experiencing the online media, in quicker way, without actually accessing the paper, gives a cleaner experience of reaching newspaper contents and, of course, removing advertising (a cleaner site involves less advertising).

Audience time is so valuable that whatever makes their experience more time productive can be positive. It is interesting to see how innovation is so simple: cleaning. Media webs are more and more complex full of links and contents and innovate is just cleaning up. Google made it here and Facebook did the same with Facebook Lite that moves in the direction of Twitter, another “cleaner and faster” web experience.