InJo Fellows Delegation Study Tour

The Innovation Journalism Fellows visited the U.S. East Coast last week. The mission of the Delegation was to meet with hosting publications on the East Coast (Wall Street Journal), study the stock markets and public innovation policy. Among many other visits, we were invited to the residence of the Swedish Ambassador to the US Gunnar Lundh (picture) for a reception where the US journalist Jerry Hagstrom of the Congress Daily was awarded the order of the Polar Star.

Delegation program:
InJo-delegation-060515.pdf

The Innovation Journalism Best Practice Wiki

At the InJo workshop, we set up the Innovation Journalism Wiki: innovationjournalism.stanford.edu The wiki is an experiment - we are seeing if we in this way can produce a best practice manual in an easier way than with the conference papers.

Other innovation journalists are welcome join! Go to innovationjournalism.stanford.edu Please register a user name.

The InJo Fellows Review the InJo Fellowship Program

On their their second workshop at Stanford May 10-12, the Innovation Journalism Fellows summarized their impressions of the fellowship program. All of the fellows have appreciated the fellowship program and say that they have improved as innovation journalists. Several report on a culture shock entering the hosting US news rooms. The US news room culture is much more competitive than the news room cultures in Sweden and Finland. It has taken work to get in, but there have been good results - on average ten published stories per fellow. The contact with Stanford has been very appreciated and several fellows wish for more lectures on campus, involving leading innovation researchers.

Here are the suggestions for next years program:

- Add and introduction to how a US news room works and how US PR agencies work (as told by a journalist)
- Expand the number of activities at Stanford
- Place the conference at the end of the program, in May
- Make a year review book. The InJo Fellows will be the editors. Fellows will set up sessions at the conference and be moderators, writing up stories on the sessions. This can replace the journalist's research-style conference papers.
- Announce best InJo article of the year award at the conference.

Innovation Journalism in Slovenia

I have received a letter from the President of the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, Prof. Andreja Kocijancic, who wants me to collaborate with them on setting up a Slovenian innovation journalism initiative. Behind her stands two strong people: Marta Svetina, Director General of TIA, the national Slovenian technology agency, and Violeta Bulc, the entrepreneur who has spearheaded the introduction of the concept of innovation journalism in Slovenia. InJo should have a large potential in Slovenia with these people involved.

The letter of intent was signed after the innovation journalism workshop with Slovenian decision makers arranged by Bulc and partners last week. Swedish Ambassador John Hagard opened the workshop and I presented the Innovation Journalism program. Jan Sandred, former InJo fellow now with VINNOVA was also one of the main speakers (His comments are available on his Innovation Journalism Blog.)

Innovation Journalism as a Research Theme

Innovation Journalism is a new concept in journalism. It's also a new concept in innovation research. There has not been any systematic work done on the role of journalism in innovation systems. This is needed.

Last week a group of innovation researchers gathered at a workshop that I organized here at Wallenberg Hall@Stanford together with Marc Ventresca (Saeid Business School@Oxford) and Antti Ainamo (SCANCOR@Stanford + Helsinki University). The other participants: Stine Grodal, Stanford; Andrew Hargadon, UC Davis; Stefan Jonsson, SCANCOR@Stanford + Stockholm School of Economics; Turo Uskali,InJo@Stanford + University of Jyväskylä; and Alisa Weinstein, InnovationJournalism.

We discussed Innovation Journalism and the Role of Journalism in Innovation (Eco)Systems as themes for scholarly research. The opinion was positive! We are writing up a workshop report that will present the case.

I believe that innovation researchers need to introduce journalism into their models. Journalism is a powerful actor. Also, academic research offers tools for looking into best practices of innovation journalism, which is good for journalists.

Research can analyze interdependencies between journalists and other actors in the innovation systems, sorting out situations where journalists run into conflicts of interest, or where journalists may be tempted to be loyal to other parties than the readership or the publication. Reserach can uncover hidden dependencies that journalists may not even be aware of that they are influenced by. All of this should be potentially useful for practitioners.

The Innovation Journalism Program network of practitioners that has been built up so far should offer attractive possibilities for the researchers to partner with practitioners. If both practitioners and researchers will enjoy meeting each other through the program, then it will happen.