Innovation is about finding better ways of doing things, and EBU Members – no less than anyone else – must continually innovate. EBU Members are constantly looking for ideas to improve their service offerings and internal processes. A successful program, first devised by Belgian broadcasters, is to set up ‘Innovation Hubs’ which invite fresh thinking and coordinate innovation with industry and start-ups.

The EBU Broadcast Technology Futures (the BTF) group recently organized a workshop organized by the Flemish public broadcaster VRT at its headquarters in Brussels on “Creating successful innovation hubs” to explore and understand the program. The group includes senior staff from members’ R&D and innovation activities, and the aim was to learn from VRT’s experience with innovation hubs and develop a plan to encourage further public service broadcasters to create similar programmes.

Workshop presentations are available to EBU Members on the workshop webpage.

Discussions focused on how the VRT program works today, lessons learned, the most promising areas for innovation by EBU members and what steps can now be taken to apply the model elsewhere.

The group is planning further meetings and workshops, with the next scheduled for September 2022 and hosted by the BBC. As one member of the group said during the discussions: “We believe that our job in public service media is not just to foresee the future, but to make it possible.”