MICROSOFT:

When Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft in 2014, he took the software giant on an almost impossible mission: Make Microsoft innovative and cool again. Fast forward to 2017: Microsoft is one of the powerhouses of cloud computing. It’s artificial intelligence system Cortana sets milestones for speech and image recognition. Its Hololens software sets the industry standard of what is possible in augmented reality solutions. And its Digital Living Room envisions media scenarios of the future.

RELEVANCY:
From its augmented reality innovations around the Hololens to cloud computing, artificial intelligence and voice recognition - Microsoft is at the forefront of innovations that will have a huge impact on media in the near future.

MATTER VC:
Matter VC is a venture capital firm and incubator. Since 2012, Matter VC has seed-funded more than 25 start-ups with a 50.000 dollar investment and given them support via its four-month intensive incubator program. Matter VC focusses on media relevant startups with a civic mission („media that matters“) and new business models. It cooperates with non-profit organisations and traditional media companies such as AP and the McClatchy media group. Matter is led by Corey Ford (Managing Partner) and Jake Shapiro (Founding Partner). In 2016, Matter VC opened a second incubator in New York.

RELEVANCY:
Matter VC is a prime example for the concept of design thinking in the media world. In four intense months prototypes of new media products and business models are created and rapidly iterated. Open collaboration and many feedback rounds between all partners and even between the startups enrolled in the program is a must. Matter VC was the role model for Hamburg’s Next Media Accelerator, operated by dpa.

THUNKABLE:
Thunkable is a drag and drop platform for building native, mobile apps with features such as voice recognition, translation, mapping and location sensors, simply by slotting together the blocks of code it uses to simplify the programming process. No coding skills are needed. Thunkable has over 140K users in 175 countries who have built 500K apps. Publishers can monetize their apps with an AdMob ads component. Thunkable is an MIT spin-out and was of the startups in Y Combinators winter of 2016 program.

RELEVANCY:
Thunkable proves that simple solutions are often the most powerful. It also proves that building a strong community is a recipe for success. Publishers can learn from Thunkable how to foster an engaged community around a beloved product.

GOOGLE:

Google experiments with so many new projects at any given time that it’s hard to keep track. The importance of Google’s News Lab initiative for publishers is self-explanatory. The implication of Google self-driving cars for publishers may be less obvious, but Google isn’t striving to build cars. It’s striving to be the the gateway to the mobile web of the future - the web on wheels. And: Amazon may be ahead of Google in voice recognition, but Google operates on the frontier of neural machine translation. It’s AI translators have mastered with more on the way. That means, multi-lingual publishing in real time is closer than ever.

AMAZON:

Amazon has sold over 5 million Echo devices. The e-commerce giant has been capturing audio in home environments, amassing data via its speech recognition system Alexa, and has gained a powerful market advantage. Amazon is uniquely positioned to become the number one audio-based search engine and an important future gateway to the internet. Moreover, Amazon is testing innovative membership concepts and bridging the gap between e-commerce and the physical world with its Seattle-based bookstores and Amazon Go convenience stores.

MAKER MEDIA:

Maker Media, publisher of MAKE magazine, is the hub of the maker movement. It is positioned at the forefront of hardware/software and consumer electronics innovation effecting business, economy, and everyday way of life. Its Maker Faire series held its first event in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006 and has since spawned Maker Faires around the world. Maker Media Founder and CEO Dale Dougherty is an early web pioneer and a co-founder of the IT book publisher O'Reilly Media.