ABSTRACT
This chapter is about innovation in magazine publishing – and how to manage for it, where it is theorised that innovation = creativity + exploitation (O’Sullivan and Dooley, 2009a). Arguing that if ‘traditional’ innovation theory focuses on product and process innovation, adding a people aspect concerning creativity itself as ‘manageable’, empirical insights from work on managing creativity in magazines (Das 2019) can be employed to develop a “three ‘Ps’ understanding of media innovation. Using the proximal data on these ‘Ps’” from magazine publishing case studies in Das (2019), a cross-section of five magazine publishers (Stylist, Cycling Weekly and independent publishers Hole & Corner and Rouleur) are used to make observations on innovation and management. The chapter concludes that such a model makes a contribution towards what is theorised by Warhurst (2010) about a ‘missing middle’ in creative industry study. Acknowledging the lure of studies theorising only the ‘conception or consumption’ in media (ideas and products), the three ‘Ps’ model factors-in a study of what happens (and by whom) between those two important points in an industrial creative process.
