Sanoma Corporation, Press Release, 28 March 2013 at 11:00 CET+1
Today, Sanoma has announced a new round of its successful innovation acceleration programme. Called the Content Accelerator, Sanoma is again grooming 150 of its brightest talents with diverse skills from six countries to challenge and train them to transform the company. The first Accelerator round, called the Mobile Accelerator, led to the establishment of four Sanoma start-up initiatives set up by in-house talent trained in the programme. These ventures will reach the market with new mobile services in the course of 2013. The second round of the Accelerator has started this month and is focusing on developing new services to discover, digest and monetize content.
Sanoma’s Chief Strategy & Digital Officer, John Martin comments: “The Accelerator programme was created last year by our Future Media Team to bring new digital business and new development methods to Sanoma. We have built this programme together with innovation company MakerStreet, who are closely involved with the leading start-up programmes in the Netherlands and have created a high quality and results-oriented approach. We are not only training new skills and attitudes, but we are also getting concrete business outcomes: last time we went from over 1,000 ideas to a handful of market-tested functional prototypes in just three months. We have developed a highly effective process that we can run over and over again.”
Lassi Kurkijärvi, part of the Future Media Team and responsible for the Accelerator programme, adds: “After the Mobile Accelerator, which led to four new ventures, we are now focusing on one of Sanoma’s key strengths: content. The Content Accelerator will look into developing prototypes around the future of how consumers discover, enjoy and interact with content. Think about new forms of monetization, creation, curation and aggregation, new ways of educational content in Sanoma’s learning domain, and how content formats are used in and travel across different media channels. And in common with the previous Accelerator, we aim to do this ‘the start-up way’: fast, lean, and highly responsive to user feedback.”
Sanoma’s Content Accelerator was kicked off in Hungary, Finland and The Netherlands two weeks ago. The objective is to develop five prototypes in three months. In the autumn of 2013, another Accelerator round will start, focusing on commerce. The Accelerator programme allows Sanoma to initiate the lean development of innovative business ideas by tapping into the collective knowledge of its international talent pool with the support of the resources of a multinational company.
Additional information
Sanoma Group Communications, Robin Janszen, tel. + 31 20 851 2108 or communications@sanoma.com
Sanoma.com
Sanoma inspires, informs and connects. Sanoma is a leading European group with a focus on consumer media and learning. We bring information, experiences, education and entertainment to millions of people every day. We employ over 10,000 professionals in some 20 countries. In 2012, the Group’s net sales totalled EUR 2.4 billion. Sanoma’s share is listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki.