One-year review of Sandbox Hub at Media City Bergen

In this approach, public service media in Europe are faced with the same challenges: developing new expertise, acculturating in-house teams, and reconciling the constraints of start-ups and the demands of the public market. Last March, the different partners of the "Sandbox Hub" project met in Bergen, Norway, to take stock of a year of collaboration in the face of these challenges. 

Media City Bergen, an innovative hub in the heart of the Norwegian fjords

One of the triggers for the creation of the Sandbox Hub is indeed the sharing of methods and best practices for collaboration with media start-ups in Europe, by partnering with private actors.

Initiated by the Flemish public broadcasting group VRT, which had already set up more than 100 projects in 4 years, this European network of Open Innovation has grown steadily since its creation. The Sandbox Hub is funded by the European Commission with the EBU (European Broadcasting Union) as a central partner. The main objective is to build an international network of innovative media gas pedals, to enable local start-ups to make a place for themselves in Europe and to exchange experience and skills.

At the end of March, under the Norwegian rain in Bergen, 14 members from 9 countries - VRT and RTBF (Belgium), NPO (Netherlands), Sveriges Radio (Sweden), France TV, Radio France (France), ERT (Greece), YLE (Finland), BBC (UK) - met, RTP (Portugal) and Media City Bergen (Norway) - to take stock over two days of a year of collaboration, and to understand the challenges of applying this model to the various partners in the context of their local ecosystem in order to strengthen the collaboration between Sandboxes.

Media City Bergen, an innovative hub in the heart of the Norwegian fjords

The Media City Bergen, which hosted the event, is the very example of the openness sought by Open Innovation. It offers an ecosystem that is perfectly suited to innovation, bringing together in a single location a hundred different players: Commercial and public service TV, print media, researchers from the University of Bergen with an investigative journalism program, MediaCube start-ups and innovative companies to work together on both technologies and innovative content around the following strategic areas: Journalism Laboratory, Cognitive computing science, Sandbox, Smart content distribution and Media Cube Incubator. The Start-up Incubator offers 48 places to access a 4-month collaboration program with major media outlets.

The meeting of the European Sandbox Hubs was also an opportunity to discover some of the start-ups hosted at the MediaCube in the fields of advertising, video production or RV production accessible to all. Even if decompartmentalization has its limits: the private media company TV2 is working on technological projects with the Norwegian public television NRK, but don't forget the competition on the content side.

France tv and start-ups

France Télévisions was the first media company to join the Sandbox Hub, in particular to pursue its goal of being "the leading partner in the innovation ecosystem to drive the modernization of the company and strengthen France tv's role in the innovation sector". Before joining the Sandbox Hub, France TV already had a long experience in working with start-ups. Since 2015, France TV has in fact experimented with different models of collaboration with start-ups, to test in 2017 a first gas pedal model with the start-up Newsbridge. The year 2019 will provide an opportunity to amplify this device and extend it to more services.

The subjects of "discord

Each Sandbox has a different focus and offers different services. One of the issues that differentiates the players is the innovation process itself: should it be based on a "push" or "pull" model? That is to say, does the start-up already have an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and wants to test it on a large audience ("push" model), or does the media issue a call for projects to which start-ups can respond ("pull" model)?

It was also a question of whether Sandboxes are the right ground for producing innovative content or whether they are only technical laboratories. Most of the media present were more focused on technology, like Radio France, whose innovation department is asserting itself with the slogan "Think less media and more tech company". With its MediaLab, France tv, for its part, brings together technology and content by combining editorial profiles, project management and technical profiles in the design of projects.

Business model of collaboration

The Sandbox Hub provides guidance on how to work effectively with start-ups. Each actor then adapts them according to his needs and local legal constraints. Testing technical and functional solutions, encouraging "matching" with the needs of operational teams are activities shared by all members. Concerning the business model of collaboration with start-ups, most of the participants operate in a "closed wallet", offering for only remuneration an exchange of skills and access to the company's user data, allowing the start-up to test its product in an industrial environment in exchange with professionals to adapt their product to a real operational need.

All of them underline the need for a change of mentality in companies with regard to innovation projects: at the SVT, for example, with 90% of projects that "fail", i.e. are not carried out in production, and only 10% of tested projects translated into products, the success indicators for innovation are more on the learning side than on the number of projects carried out in production. VRT, for its part, tests its projects directly in production.  It requires a POC before collaborating with the start-up, and then tests the POC for 3 months on less "mainstream" products, such as radio Studio Brussels, which clearly displays the slogan "We are in beta all the time".

Two days of rich discussions thanks in particular to facilitators Mick de Valck and Sarah Geeroms from VRT, who have been leading this project since its inception. It is crucial for start-ups to be able to test their products under real conditions, all of which is made possible with strong support from top management to make innovation part of a company's strategy.

This assessment of one year of collaboration within the Sandbox Hub clearly shows the different states of maturity in the media's work with start-ups and a real need for the exchange of best practices. With a concrete reaffirmation of the value of the Sandbox: the main objective is indeed to create concrete solutions for each media company, with a second objective which is to participate in the innovation ecosystem by making a positive impact.  

In 2019, the Sandbox Hub will therefore be even more open, more ambitious, and more collaborative. With a new balance sheet in a year's time.

To find out more about the Sandbox Hub

Discover the projects of the Sandbox France tv on the Mediaroad website