Forbes plans to keep changing

Lewis Dvorkin

Lewis Dvorkin, the chief product officer at Forbes, writes about the business news publication must constantly be changing.

Dvorkin writes, “As for mobile apps, we’ve moved cautiously forward. Most news organizations essentially treat apps as another distribution platform. They get plenty of downloads, but fail to develop loyal audiences or sound revenue models. Last October, the light went off for us at our Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia. One thousand attendees fell in love with a white label conference app. That set in motion our purchase of Camerama, a photo-sharing app, as part of a larger plan to develop a suite of apps for passionate communities. We brought on the startup’s founder, its Web server and the developer who built it. In a few weeks, we’ll give Under 30 list members and others a sneak preview of the Under 30 app at parties in New York and San Francisco, both of which attracted an eager sponsor.

“The Camerama move is a springboard to much more.We’re clearing out space in our Jersey City office for an internal incubator that will bring editorial, technology, product and sales together to build what’s next for the mobile web . The big goal: build the tools, functionality, templates — and the newsroom ethos — for a world in which the classic 600-800 world story is not the be all and end all of the journalistic effort. That will likely mean changing processes, procedures and how teams across the company work together so we can launch products and iterate even faster than we do now.

“Change is hard — and requires no holds barred action. Five years ago, we effectively reinvented how we do things. FORBES, like many others, had ridden the portal model hard. We turned everything upside down for the world of social media. Sixty percent of the people who roll up to me joined the company within the last five years, 50% of them in the last 18 months alone. Today, our core business is strong, our revenue models more sound than ever, and our expanding newsroom is growing with excitement. Still, the marketplace is relentless, calling for new upon new. That’s why it’s time to innovate atop innovation.”