The People Equation

CHAPTER 2

THE PROCESS: IMPROVISATIONAL INNOVATION

Pat Younge, former chief creative officer at the BBC, was looking to find ways to generate ideas for programs that would better connect across generational differences and cohorts in the United Kingdom. The BBC had operated much the same way for eighty years, but with the advancement of technology and introduction of social media, audience behaviors had thrown what the BBC had known up on its head. “We were losing ground fast, and needed to figure out how to reconnect to our audience and—quite frankly—our staff,” Younge wrote in an email exchange with Deborah.¹

Around the BBC, you could feel lower staff morale in the air, in no small part because the BBC’s historic ability to produce its own programs ...