ABSTRACT
Magazine publishing is an industry that has been transformed in the last two decades. Having to innovate in the face of digital media, this chapter examines innovation theory and the ‘drivers’ of innovation for the UK magazine business. Providing an assessment of these drivers through a PEST analysis framework (analyses of political, economic, sociological and technological history), the chapter reveals them as facets of a ‘networked society’, the ‘digital economy’ and its related neoliberal governmental policy. Providing a case example, within this context, of innovation at Decanter magazine, the chapter suggests strategies for legacy print and digital magazine publishers – ones that theorists Christensen (1997) and Christensen et al. (2015) might recognise as routes to both ‘sustaining’ and ‘disruptive’ innovation.
