Finding the lacuna

Why imitation only ever buys you someone else’s old idea, and where the lacuna in a crowded market hides.

Go to any news media conference this year and sit through the loyalty session. There will be a slide with “first-party data” on it, and someone will say “relationship” the way people say words they picked up at the last conference. For a good part of the room it is a new word. The idea that an audience is a relationship you build, and not just a number …