Connected Studio: Update and next steps for BBC innovation project

It has been some time since I gave the Internet Blog an update on Connected Studio activity and the impact it has been having across the BBC with audiences.

For those that are unaware, BBC Connected Studio provides central (technical, audience and product) expertise to encourage the BBC to create even better digital experiences based on audience needs and emerging technology opportunities.

It does much of this by collaborating with external digital agencies (in fact it has engaged with 700+ companies to date) which it does by investing in development of early stage pilots and trials with a budget of up to £1m per year.

Connected Studio started in 2012 focused on encouraging new digital ideas for BBC Online – products, services, editorial and design and stimulating Editorial divisions about true potential for storytelling online.

During this time…

• We have supported innovation across the BBC working with nearly every corner of the organization (such as News, World Service, Radio, TV, Comedy, iPlayer, Radio 1, Natural History, Science, iWonder, Sport, Make it Digital and many more). You can read the innovation briefs of all the open calls.
• We have worked with 786 external companies, ensuring the BBC met its charter obligations to support UK PLC achieved via principles of open innovation. Over 60 of these companies are now established on BBC Digital Service Frameworks.
• We have hosted 3229 participants in the 130 Connected Studio events across the UK, Europe and Africa.
• To date, we have received and reviewed 1096 ideas, leading to development and trialing of 128 pilots.
• CS innovation funding has contributed £2.5M to the external spend of BBC Online, supporting UK’s vibrant digital creative economy and driving forward many future BBC services.
• We have successfully launched and supported BBC Taster and BBC News Labs as platforms to support innovation from BBC and its partners.

As we begin planning for the next phase of BBC Online in the next charter period, Connected Studio - including Taster - is being fully integrated into BBC R&D.

Over time, we are expecting our editorial divisions to increasingly fund the type of content innovation that has recently been driven by Connected Studio, whilst BBC Taster will continue to support the testing and showcasing of BBC’s digital innovation, and increasingly those of partner organisations.

Put simply, for the BBC, this means that developing new ‘internet-first’ digital content for our audiences – perhaps Virtual Reality or new poetry, animated news or remix Shakespeare – will no longer be a niche activity reliant on a small team within R&D, but will in time become part and parcel of the way the whole BBC adapts to meet the changing needs of the licence fee payer.

For Connected Studio we are shifting in focus from driving and funding this content innovation to enabling others, continuing to make it easier for our editorial colleagues to trial and experiment.

Connected Studio will be concentrating its resources on developing innovation platforms and projects to support the drive around BBC R&D’s vision for a New Broadcasting System and the emerging opportunities such as the Ideas Service. We expect to share information about how third parties can be involved in this work in the coming months.

In the longer term, we expect there to be lots of opportunities for the wider digital industry to work across the whole BBC, creating new digital content.

This shift has always been part of the Connected Studio ambition.

When innovating in a large organisation, it is tempting to follow the ‘skunkworks’ model, and work in separation from the main business, unhindered by usual practice and culture. While it would certainly have made the last four years easier in some respects, Connected Studio has never opted for this approach. We decided early in the project that we would open the programme to teams from across the whole of the BBC and companies and partner organisations across the globe.

In the process we’ve helped start-ups to learn and grow, we’ve shared knowledge and given valuable experience to dozens of production teams, brought a range of new technologies into the corporation, and supported the growth of digital content expertise within the BBC such as the Digital Storytelling Team and the Birmingham-based Digital Guerillas.

Not every pilot makes it live nor is every collaboration a success, but we learn something valuable from all of them, and always try to prevent the organisation from making the same mistake twice.

This isn’t just in terms of output either. As we are quite often the first people to do things, we worked in a lot of ‘behind the scenes’ areas to improve BBC practices.

For example, we shepherded through one of the first projects to use the BBC’s then-new cloud infrastructure, the BBC Weatherbot pilot.

We have helped re-define the way the BBC issues new contracts and manages intellectual property rights agreements that has proved useful when BBC Three made the switch to online. But all of this would be navel-gazing if we didn’t make things that licence fee-payers loved. To date, 128 pilots, many built by UK digital agencies, have been published on BBC Taster and have had over 7 million unique visitors taking the opportunity to engage with early experiments and help shape the BBC’s future output.

It is perhaps a surprise to realise that many other similar projects previously might only have been shown to a small focus group but now due to CS, there is an explosion in audience input, with 90,000+ pieces of individual feedback submitted so far helping inform what will / will not work in future.

The majority of the audience who come regularly to Taster to try, rate and share the BBC’s digital trials are positive in their feedback and in their desire to help the BBC select the very best and distinctive new features or products. Experiments that support the principles the licence fee was originally established to uphold.

For example please go and Try, Rate and Share the latest pilots for BBC Sport Live, Radio 4 Drama, Shakespeare Season, Global News and supporting Dementia sufferers.

Over next few weeks and months we will be sharing more pilots into Taster, as well as opening up our tools, processes and the knowledge we have amassed working with some of the best digital creative inside and outside the BBC. We will also share more about our future plans.

As always, I’d like to recognise my team who work hard to make it a good experience for the companies, the BBC teams and the audience who engage with the experiments, with focus, ambition and good humour. I’d like to thank them for their commitment to the cause.

If you have any questions please get in touch via connectedstudio@bbc.co.uk.