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Public Radio and TV leaders and staff know that they have to innovate their way into the future. They can see clearly what is happening to newspapers and music. They know that they have to end up with a web-centred, person-centred, participation-full, community-building, low-cost alternative.

I don’t think the destination is in doubt or even unclear now. The challenge is surely now how to get “there” from “here”?

The old reality of “Here” is that we have an existing business that pays all the bills right now. That we have an existing audience that likes things as they are! That we have an existing staff that knows what it knows and is frightened about the new and what it may mean to them. That we have an existing board that doesn’t know much about anything. That we don’t have a lot of money and that we have a lot of fixed expenses.

“There” is not a bit different from “Here”.  Getting to “There” is a Ptolemaic revolution. “There” cannot be built upon “Here” because “There” has to disrupt “Here” to live. Getting from Here to There has to involves a “Disruption”. It is of course the essence of the Innovator’s Dilemma.

How do you solve the Innovators Dilemma?  The really big idea that Torey has is how to solve the Innovator’s Dilemma.

He reminded me that, if you work inside your traditional organization, it will allow you only to effect incremental change. He reminded me that if you put the new into the old, the old will have to kill it. He reminded me that, if the new is disruptive, you have to put it out of reach of the old and you have to give it the optimal environment to grow in. He reminded me that when it is strong enough you can allow the new to “Inform” the old. What Church will accept its own reformation?

Torey’s ideas of how best to solve the Innovator’s dilemma are what I would like to focus on today. You can find the details of what Torey is doing and why in a link to the Current here.  You can find the link to the site here. 

In this interview, I want to share with you Torey’s views on how to handle disruptive innovation. How do we get to the New Reality from the Old Reality? How do we get from Here to There? What may be the most innovative aspect of Vocalo may not be what it is for itself but for how it has been structured as part of the larger Chicago Public Radio so that it can be truly innovative and survive!

As Torey tells me Vocalo is truly the opposite of a typical station. Imagine this inside your station!!!!!!!

Vocalo is a pure Web 2.0 play. It is as fire is to water as far as the 1.0 world goes. All the content comes in without filtering or direction from the public. None of it is structured.

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At the heart of Vocalo is an invitation. We are invited to come into the Vocalo world and to use our voice and our talent. There are no strings.  “At first the only things that went up were people looking for outlets. Producers etc. Now it’s much more grass roots – personal diaries etc. We also help people get better at audio. We offer out some Olypmus recorders – you fill it and send it back to us.”

Vocalo has 15 producers who in a human way, not a digg algorithm, sift the content for goodies and for exceptional people. They are the tastemakers. Who are these people?

“Once we opened the requirement beyond years of experience in radio – you would be amazed at the quality of people out there who can curate and find great content.”

The best of the best makes it onto air – this is the reward for the content producers.

“We don’t just lift the content – we in effect run a school. We act as producers. We help in editing. We help shape the story etc. We have a human and direct contact with our community.

I asked then what was the reward for the content providers.

“People are still excited when they make it onto mass media – many may hate Fox news but if they were asked to go on it – they would. We give people and the community the opportunity to get their voice out. Getting them on air is a very important reward – it helps them build reputation. Such a reward drives a new kind of quality – an authentic voice with something true to say.”

So why I asked did he choose to put this new world onto a station that showed no sign that it was part of the formal system of public radio?

“Vocalo is the innovation frequency. Many of the people we wanted to see if we could attract do not like Public radio as it is. They did not like its stuffy voice. They find the content irrelevant to their lives. They don’t listen even to radio.”

“So we took this additional frequency and made it into the opposite of traditional public radio. Vocalo is a website that has a radio part to it. Not a radio system that has a website. We shifted the polarity. We also shifted the polarity in our relationship with the audience. We invited them in rather than pushed stuff out to them. We shifted the polarity of marketing. We allowed the space to grow naturally rather than made a big deal out of it and pushing it. We shifted the editing polarity – we knew that people did not want to be edited. We allowed unfettered space on the web.”

I asked Torey then how he saw the link between the web and radio.

“The Internet is designed to allow users to create a community based on commonality—to find and interact with people who are like us.  But real, geographic community isn’t like that—it’s a collection of people who are more likely to be different than the same.  Radio, as a mass medium, needs to serve that real community of differences. So, between the media—internet and radio–the editing process enables both to co-exist. At Vocalo.org we start with the unfettered communities of the web and then we layer a selective juxtaposing process onto this that allows for a scope of voices and views on air that better reflects the real community we serve.”

So what then about the link to Public radio? What about the Brand?

“There is no sign on Vocalo that this is part of Public Radio. The fear inside the traditional organization about jeopordising the brand has been dealt with by not linking the two. We don’t link them at all. Now many know that we are linked but we are not putting either at risk from the other. We also have a different location that enables us to offer the staff of both some isolation and hence freedom.”

” I think that the old can safely look at the new and we can learn safely from it. If the new builds a large and a new world, we will have a complimentary system that includes both.”

Ah I wondered, like a parent and a child!