News Corp makes innovation a top priority

Michael Miller is making innovation one of his top strategic priorities at News Corp Australia.

News Corp Australia chief Michael Miller and chief technology officer Alisa Bowen. Picture: James Croucher

Michael Miller is making innovation one of his top strategic priorities at News Corp Australia, where risks are taken to spur change and set up the REA Groups and hipages of the future.

A media for equity fund that gives Australian start-up businesses access to advertising and marketing inventory to attain scale and build brands lies at the heart of his plan.

Speaking to The Australian in an interview to launch Scaleup Mediafund, a partnership between News, Nova Entertainment and Fox Sports, Mr Miller set out his vision for driving innovation to achieve better business outcomes.

To survive and thrive in a business world that is defined by the fast pace of technological change, “innovation is crucial”, said Mr Miller, the executive chairman Australasia of News Corp Australia.

While corporate Australia may have once viewed innovation solely from a risk perspective, Mr Miller said successful businesses must anticipate and harness opportunities that innovation and technological disruption create by adopting a “risk positive” approach.

“The gap we’ve identified in the market is that once those businesses have been established from a proof-of-concept point of view, they need an audience, customers, engagement, and they need to do so at scale,” he said.

“The idea behind Scaleup is that we’re already investing and participating in start-ups. Where we can play a unique role in collaboration with other media is to help them reach the next stage of their life cycle. The thinking is ‘let’s spot the gap, an opportunity and an area to invest in’.”

Mr Miller is looking to identify businesses that “combine with our core competencies” to provide “diversification, insights and learnings in new categories that we don’t currently play in”.

The company had always shown a great willingness to try new things, he noted, citing long-term bets like a canny investment in REA Group,
a $8.6 billion ASX-listed ad
giant majority-owned by News.

“There’s elements of the value chain that we can invest in to scale-up using our reputation, brands and audiences to drive new businesses,” he said.

“We’ve had a long heritage of building businesses in categories, but not necessarily a history of investing in them.”

In the past year, however, News has become more technology-oriented, taking a 25 per cent stake in Hipages, a fast-growing home building and renovation services resource.

Among other investments are a majority shareholding in marketing specialist DIAKRIT and the nation’s biggest peer-to-peer lender, SocietyOne.

In April, News Corp signalled plans to put augmented reality at the centre of its future technology by investing in technology firm Plattar as it moves into one of the hottest new corners of tech. “One of the areas that we’ve been particularly focused on is investing in and developing new opportunities, particularly those that align with innovation at a first to market or early stage in the growth cycle,” he said.

To build bridges with the start-up community, News invested in Fishburners, Australia’s largest tech co-working space, and News Foundry, a hackathon-style boot camp pitting rival teams against each other to generate new ideas.

But to accelerate the program, encourage creative thinking and spark further innovation in the wider community, Mr Miller said Scaleup would form the linchpin of a broader strategy that took these efforts to a “new level”.

He said real innovation happened when you got “the right people working together”, while maintaining an open culture.