On April 18, from 3 to 4:30 p.m. ET, we will host a groundbreaking webinar – “Rebuild Your Core While You Reinvent Your Business Model.” This webinar is free to LMA members and association partners.

Chris Lee, president of Deseret Digital Media, will present the key takeaways from a recent Harvard Business Review article, “Two Routes to Resilience,” written by Clark Gilbert (CEO of Deseret Digital Media and Deseret News), Matthew Eyring and Richard N. Foster. To read the full article click here (free registration required). We encourage you to read the article before the event.

Lee will dive deep into the concepts presented in the article and will showcase concrete examples. At the heart of the issue is the notion that there are two transformations underway in our industry:

• “Transformation A” that should reposition the core business, adapting its current business model to the altered marketplace.
• “Transformation B” that should create a separate, disruptive business to develop the innovations that will become the source of future growth.

The Local Media Association board of directors spent considerable time discussing the HBR article at the recent strategic planning meeting in January. The impact was so great that a separate board committee was established to address the dual transformation that is going on in our industry.

So why did the LMA board spend so much time on this topic and why is it so important to our association’s mission and programming for 2013?

Because so much of our revenue is still on the print side and yet most of the focus has been on the digital side. Local media executives are frustrated. This article reinforces the need to rebuild your core at the same time that you are reinventing your future business model. It makes sense.

Reinventing the business model requires disruptive thinking and must be run separately from the legacy business. This includes separate staff and P&L’s – all of the things that we learned from the Newspaper Next project and Clay Christensen’s book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma.”

This event on April 18, is a must-attend for anyone involved in running a local media company. We expect lots of questions and we have allotted ample time at the end of this webinar to take as many as possible. To register click here.