IA as a competitive advantage
Wired News: The Beeb Shall Inherit the Earth: “America’s entertainment industry is committing slow, spectacular suicide, while one of Europe’s biggest broadcasters — the BBC — is rushing headlong to the future, embracing innovation rather than fighting it.”
The BBC is indeed quietly getting waay ahead of most other media companies.
I often talk about IA as a competitive advantage: the BBC gets that. (I shouldn’t define IA this broadly, but hey). They have consistent URI’s for every program ever made (working on it at least), they have API’s in the new BBC Backstage, they embrace RSS and let users play with their data. In other words: they architect their information with an eye towards the future. Long term metadata. Good URI’s. Open to users.
What will happen (and this is where the “IA as a competitive advantage” comes in), is that its competition (CNN, …) will wake up one day and see the advantage they have built. The CEO will proclaim: “Let’s build the same”. They’ll try to find vendors. The CEO will assume she can buy this.
But the way the beeb is architecting its information is as much a cultural achievement as a technical one. It takes dedication, love and years of time to make a company open up its information, even if it’s in the statutes that the company is there to serve the public, as in the beebs’ case. IA is hard work.
The big advantage the BBC has had is that it’s attitude towards information hasn’t been lead by vendor pitches, but by passionate and talented people for years. You can’t just buy that, or expect to catch up with that in a year or two. That’s IA as a competitive advantage.
June 2nd, 2005 at 2:13 pm
Brilliant post Peter!
June 6th, 2005 at 4:32 pm
Completely agree - but would add that the other advantage the BBC has is its mandate. It is effectively a public sector broadcasting organisation, and this may well make it the cultural triumph you speak of easier. Still - great post :)