In Touch with Innovation: interview with Ecuiti

by Paul Lee, Ecuiti

Thursday, March 17, 2016      Paul Lee            0

Editor's note: On 26 January 2016 the Future Media Lab. hosted its annual conference, which brought together politicians, media representatives, journalists, innovators and academics to discuss the impact of technology on Europe's media sector, particularly in regard to changes taking place in relation to audience engagement. In the run-up to this event, the Future Media Lab. team had time to talk to some of the leading innovators in Europe's media sector about the challenges they see and what solutions they offer.

In the fifth edition of the recurring interview series, "In Touch with Innovation", the Future Media Lab. team talks to Paul Lee, Founder of Ecuiti - developing tools and methods to systematize insight.

What is the main idea behind your start-up?

To be useful, creating true insight from data needs to be simple, yet relevant enough to apply in real-world situations, and needs to be fast enough so business leaders can respond quickly. We created Ecuiti to do just that: simplify, accelerate, and enhance data driven insight to drive impact rapidly. There will be a time when digital insight is simple and intuitive —I call that “Information Age 2.0”— we want to be the ones to bring it to the world.

What observation kicked off your project?

We had the privilege of toiling for 9 years with some of the most challenging ad-hoc big data analysis on the planet examining the mechanisms of the digital economy as forensic litigation analysts. We realized that more companies were finally recognizing the strategic value of data driven insights. We knew our skills developing extremely complex—yet robust—analysis rapidly would be useful to help people capture this value. So we set out to create an elegant, simple way to achieve insight driven impact.

What is your added value to media companies in audience engagement?

In the same way that media industry hides the complexity, professionalism, and diligence of generating highly relevant and engaging content, we can do the same thing with analytic insights. Difficult questions around audience engagement, content distribution, monetization can be answered by starting down a path that harnesses past, present, and future information assets. We give media companies the tools to simplify and extend their capabilities to get better and better results from their information assets.

What is the biggest challenge for an effective collaboration between media companies and innovative start-up companies?

If you are unfamiliar with the real problems in creating analytical insight, then it is extremely challenging to adapt and develop the required solutions. Media companies are at varying degrees of technical and analytical maturity. Today, the majority of traditional media companies are just getting their feet wet with big data analytics. Which means they’re just learning how to swim, while the digital platforms who have been working with these challenges for decades are battling each other like Olympic swimmers. Bridging a gap like that is not impossible, but is certainly daunting. Start-ups try to do the best they can, but still have to work with media companies within a frame of reference that is familiar to traditional media dynamics. Sometimes—and with technology, often—the answers lie outside of these traditional frameworks.

Why is it important for media companies to know their audiences?

The essence of professional media and journalism lies in the fact that content creators and distributors know how to create an experience that audiences haven’t even imagined yet. Technology doesn’t change the fact that the media sector has the opportunity to continue to delight their audiences. Technology platforms are great at observing patterns that help them get to know other people’s audiences—but they will never (in our lifetimes) be able to feel the human context of engaging, compelling media. If you can complement the innate talents and experience of professional media with the pattern recognition mechanisms as well as greater efficiency and effectiveness enabled by technology the sky is the limit. This combination will create many new opportunities for creating and capturing value from many different forms of content.

Next to this we offer an integrated community solution, where we guide those trusted ambassadors, through an exclusive portal, in influencing their peers in a non-intrusive way.

Where do you think media fail today in developing a comprehensive data strategy?

Developing a comprehensive data strategy requires understanding the full end to end process required to develop digital insight. Leaders who drive today’s media companies are familiar with some of the individual components of the process (such as data collection, preparation, analysis, visualization and access) but are usually unfamiliar with how to optimize the digital insight ecosystem and turn it to their advantage. One of the biggest gaps is in the comprehension of what constitutes a digital asset. One of the secrets to the digital economy follows the adage: “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” The media sector still embodies the essence of professional media and journalism, most media companies don’t realize that they hold the power to develop and capitalize on digital assets that they need not make available to others. We are here to help the media sector unlock the secrets that will provide these advantages.

How can media and tech companies best collaborate over data analytics?

Given the digital transformation that is happening in the media sector today, both must be open to embrace collaboration, learning, change and new solutions. Since technology innovations happen so fast, this collaborative learning process will be iterative. This means learning how to recognize the “right” data at the “right” time within the “right” analytical frameworks—and most learning will come by making a few mistakes. Overall, however, the most important part of beginning to harness the power of digital insight is to start the journey.

For more information about  Ecuiti, visit www.ecuiti.com.