Internal Startups: New Rules for New Technologies

+ Kari Kohn

To remain relevant in a rapidly changing industry, news publishers are increasingly using the startup dynamic—a way to adopt new systems of rules within their organizations.  The New York Times (The New York Times Company Research & Development Lab), The Washington Post (WapPo Labs), and The Boston Globe (The Globe Lab) have created labs that allow for innovation and experimentation with new technologies as well as quick turnaround on new projects. TechCrunch reports that Huffington Post is the latest to copy this idea of an internal start-up, recently launching HuffPost Labs. Conor White-Sullivan, Director of HuffPost Labs, describes the style of Lead Tech Brandon Diamond as well as the benefits of the new lab:

[Diamond] has the startup attitude of doing projects quickly in eight week sprints and seeing if they work,” Sullivan says. “We have the advantage of being part of the HuffPost ecosystem, with millions of page views so you can see if something works or not. But you can work without being bogged down by corporate bureaucracy.
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