Disruption isn’t just for start-up companies.

Conventional wisdom these days points to the prominent role that disruptive business models play for start-ups. Using the “disruptive” play has upended many business sectors and created companies with huge marketplace valuations, from car services / taxis with Uber to the hotel business with airbnb.

Perhaps no business sector has been challenged more than the media business, in particular magazine publishing.

Paying homage to a master of disruption.

Consider one company at the center of media disruption storm: Time Inc. founded back in 1923 by Henry Luce, who was one of the original news-aggregators. He went on to build a highly profitable stable of magazines.

TIME was the first news magazine in the US Market. It emphasized brevity so a busy person could read it in an hour, launched with the tag line “Take Time – it’s brief.” Time Inc. enjoyed a meteoric rise for the next 80 years. Time became part of Time Warner in 1989, in turn becoming part of AOL when they purchased Time Warner for $ 164 billion in 2000.

As the Internet exploded flooding the market with compelling and competitive content offerings (many for free) - Time Inc. watched the circulation and ad revenues of its core titles including TIME, Fortune, Money and Sports Illustrated take a nosedive.

In June of last year Time Inc. was spun-off from it more profitable corporate parent Time Warner, following some tough restructuring moves that included the elimination of over 500 jobs.

Time Inc. CEO Joe Ripp

As Time Inc. CEO Joseph Ripp recently told Bloomberg “We’re in the content industry now, we’re not in the magazine industry anymore.” He went on “For quite a while Time Inc. had thought of itself being in the magazine industry…the moment you define yourself that way, you put yourself in a paper box.”

Time Inc.’s existence as a standalone entity will test both the sustainability of print advertising and the value of brand recognition in an ever-changing media landscape, where decades-old titles are competing with the likes of Buzz Feed and Vox, and new players are entering the crowded field every day.  

Moving forward Time Inc. will need to prove its ability to effectively disrupt its historic publishing business model, and find new ways to generate revenue.

To start, Time Inc. has announced plan to relocate from its iconic headquarters in mid-town to Brookfield Place at 225 Liberty Street in lower Manhattan. There are also reports that Time Inc. is making a huge and ambitious bet to become a tech company with some key outside hires (from the likes of Amazon) and announcement that it will be the first major publisher to accept bitcoin.

Newell Thompson

But Time Inc. is also taking a disruptive approach to redefining the way its core brands are doing business, including Time, Fortune, Money and Sports Illustrated. Enter Time’s Content Marketing & Strategies unit (CM&S) headed by Newell Thompson. He is a veteran publishing executive, who then spent fours years in start-ups before returning to Time Inc. in late 2010.

 “I understand the pain points of start-ups. It helped me grasp the importance of recognizing opportunities, and then pivoting quickly with products that could be successfully monetized” observed Newell.

He is taking a disruptive start-up mindset to building the content marketing suite of products for the Time Inc. News Group. Newell and his team are re-defining “magazine” from an ink-on-paper business to being a high-value content hub, one that leverages the distribution power of some of the world’s best know publishing brands.

"Cultural disruption is needed to expand our brands into areas where we can build value for marketers and avoid the commoditization model of media buying houses." said Newell. “We’re now in the business of selling brand-building ideas for our clients - by delivering powerful content and distribution.”

Newell is clearly on the inside at Time Inc. and out to disprove the conventional wisdom that traditional publishing companies can’t adopt new ideas and effectively monetize them. His charge is to help make CM&S an enterprise-level growth driver, something worthy of sharing with Wall Street.  

CM&S is helping create vertical thought leadership topics and conversations. The team is able to offer a unique combination of Time Inc.’s content creation assets and distribution network; coupled with a broader contributor network of writers, designers, photographers and videographers to built highly engaging content for their clients. 

As Time CEO Joe Ripp said “I have 2000 of the world’s best content producers in the world working for me, and our content can be produced and delivered in all sorts of different formats.”

Time Inc. has been in the story telling business for over 90 years, and they are exploring new ways to deliver these compelling stories to better engage audiences on behalf of their branded sponsors in the process.

While Newell acknowledges that the profit margins in digital media are much less than those of print media, he is helping carry the CM&S mission and message with infectious enthusiasm.

TIME is giving analysts a reason to take a hard look.

This type of disruptive innovation may the catalyst Time Inc. is looking for to propel its planned phoenix-like rise from the ashes, from the old world order of media companies.

A leading indicator of Time Inc.’s potential for success may be the 30%+ jump in the value of TIME stock since early October of last year. The stock is now trading near its 52 week high - impressive in light of the fact that equity analysts and institutional investors are a hard group to fool, as most people know.