At NYTimes.com, the design and product development group of Marc Frons, CTO of Digital Operations, worked with Zimbalist’s team and Adobe developers on the Times Reader 2.0 application, the next generation, on-screen reading system it developed on the Adobe AIR platform. Frons further encourages forward thinking among his 120-person team with twiceannual innovation contests. Winners receive cash, recognition and the resources to turn their ideas into reality. Typical projects are measured against criteria like revenue potential or journalistic value. R&D projects aren’t. “Since we build software, there’s no huge capital investment up front,” Frons says, “which allows us to experiment. The emphasis is on rapid development.”