51: Publishing innovation: how do we manage change?

Talking through my hat

This year has proved, more than ever, that it's impossible to predict the future. But given change is inevitable, how do we manage and prepare for change? Our panel discusses questions like:

• how do we identify where change is needed in our business?
• how do we get our teams on board with the idea of change?
• how do we pick our battles and make sure the most important changes happen?
• how do we know things are heading in the right direction?

The panel discussion was streamed live on YouTube, followed by a live Q&A on Twitter under the event hashtag #TalkingThroughMyHat.

The panel Bec Evans

Bec Evans is a writer, speaker and business founder. While working in publishing she turned her side hustle Prolifiko - a writing productivity coach - into a startup. As a consultant she helps businesses innovate and coaches people to build the skills and confidence to make their ideas happen. Her first book, How to Have a Happy Hustle: The Complete Guide to Making Your Ideas Happen won the Startup Inspiration category at the 2020 Business Book Awards.

Emmanuel Kolade

Emmanuel Kolade is the Founder of Shulph, a book technology company focussed on multi-format reading experiences. He comes from technology industry where he has spent the last 17 years specialising in human-centred design to build digital products. Prior to founding Shulph, Emmanuel was a senior management consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), where he led the firm's digital experience practice to deliver digital transformation programmes for some of the UK and world's leading brands.

Sam Missingham

Sam Missingham is an award-winning book marketer and publishing commentator. She is the founder of The Empowered Author, a book marketing membership service for authors. Before this she worked at HarperCollins UK as head of audience development and, before that, worked The Bookseller and was co-founder of FutureBook. She has won several book marketing awards, been shortlisted for the Digital Book World commentator of the year, and was runner-up for the Pandora award for sustained contribution to publishing. She speaks regularly about book marketing and publishing strategies around the world, and loves speaking to students and mentoring people entering publishing.

Tim Williams

Tim Williams is the Managing Director of Edward Elgar Publishing. Tim joined Elgar 11 years ago and runs the business with his brother-in-law. However, Tim's career began in retail and consumer goods, with a spell in management consulting, before joining the industry with LexisNexis. Edward Elgar is an independent family-owned publisher, with offices in the UK and USA. The company publishes 450 book titles a year across the social sciences and law and has won numerous awards for its digital platform and author focused publishing service.

John Pettigrew (host)

John Pettigrew (he/him) is a recovering editor and Founder and CEO at We Are Futureproofs, a cloud platform that enables book teams to proofread on-screen effectively for the first time. Futureproofs arose from John's frustration with the tools and workflows that were available to his team, a frustration that led to innovation! John wears a hat and spends time on Twitter as @John_Pettigrew.

This session is one of a series of three during this year's virtual Frankfurt Book Fair.