The Economist has an article about Apple, a company the magazine calls "California's master of innovation." Their success comes at least in part from their ability to hew closely to the classic principles of disruptive innovation, including:

• A relentless focus on the customer -- what you might call an obsession with "Jobs" to be done (sorry);


• No corporate ego about where good ideas come from. "Not invented here? No problem."


• A willingness to start small and look to future growth ("earn a little, learn a lot");


• The ability to "fail wisely," or, in Newspaper Next terms, "fail fast and cheap."

If you're a local newspaper, this Mediapost report should be chilling.

Marchex, a search and ad network company, announced that it has launched 200,000 local websites providing user reviews on local businesses.