Four days from now the BBC Trust will meet to debate and, I hope, to agree the BBC’s direction of travel over the next six years. It is not so much a six-year plan – audiences and technology are moving too fast for that – but rather our vision of the future, which requires us to make some important far-reaching choices now. Despite the headlines, this is not primarily a story about cuts. All areas of the BBC will be required to make efficiency savings, but some areas need capacity reductions while others will see increases in investment.

I’m proud that one of the BBC’s greatest strengths is the passion of our people to make great programmes for our audiences. But this can make it hard to accept the shifting of resources. Every penny that we can free up will go to making our vision a reality.

We call the vision Creative Future and it is based on three simple propositions. The first is that the BBC should concentrate its creative energy and its resources on what it does best: high quality, distinctive content. We know that this is what audiences want and expect from us, whether it is properly funded global news, outstanding factual programmes, edgy comedy or original drama such as Life on Mars. Earlier this year we decided to pull out of the bidding for Neighbours: we believe that the future of the BBC depends on the kind of distinctive, valuable content that commercial broadcasters find it hard to support, not on Australian soap operas, no matter how popular.

I believe that trend towards distinctiveness and away from the market must continue. After a decade in which the amount of content that the BBC makes has grown enormously, we should now make less but make it to a higher standard.

In an era of constrained funding, much better to concentrate on the truly exceptional than to spread the butter too thin: expect us to commission fewer hours of television, fewer web pages overall, but with more landmark pieces and more space for innovation. This does not mean, as some have suggested, the shutting of particular channels or services. We intend to use our portfolios of television and radio networks and our digital platforms to make sure that as many people as possible can find and enjoy the content we make.

The second proposition is that the BBC should continue its migration into the digital future. Over the past decade we have developed the potential of the web and other digital media with more conviction and success than almost any other traditional broadcaster in the world. But far from stabilising, the digital revolution is gathering pace and presenting amazing new opportunities for the BBC. There is the opportunity, for example, to use technologies such as the BBC iPlayer which will give licence payers the ability to access great television and radio programmes whenever, and ultimately wherever, they want.

If we do not invest in this future, if we instead draw up the wagons around our existing services, the BBC will rapidly cease to be relevant to our audiences and will lose its power to be a force for good in British national life. So the BBC Trust faces a difficult judgment: what is the right balance between investment in quality content – on which not just the BBC’s reputation but also everything else depends – and investment in digital distribution and other new services.

People sometimes accuse us of being obsessed with technology. In fact, I believe the BBC should always be about content – that is where we add the most value. So the lion’s share of the licence fee should always go straight into content investment. Yet unless we free some fresh investment for distribution and other digital priorities, the risk is that the vision of Creative Future will remain just that – a vision and nothing more.

The third proposition is about the BBC itself. Modern Britain demands a modern BBC, one that is more open and more responsive to the public it serves.

We have made strides on efficiency in recent years, but we will need to do more if we are to afford Creative Future. The BBC Trust has set us a target of 3% per year for each of the next five years. After the stringent efficiencies of the past three years, it will be a real challenge.

Our staff always worry about the impact of such targets on programme quality. It is the right worry: an “efficiency” that leads to a loss of quality is not an efficiency at all – and it is certainly not something that the British public would welcome.

Our task is to work together to harness the new production technologies to make sure that we achieve genuine productivity gains. We must also make the most of the incredible talent that we have inside the BBC rather than lose it through unnecessary redundancy: expect to see a new emphasis on training and redeployment.

Modernising the BBC is about more than efficiency. We need to become a far more open organisation, more willing to listen and admit error, more willing to act to improve things. The painful summer we have had is evidence that this change is already happening.

We have not tried to hide anything – indeed, most of the problems have come to light because we ourselves discovered and disclosed them. We have confronted some pretty uncomfortable shortcomings and taken immediate, firm and public action on them. It is not easy but it is the right direction.

The media sector is going through a revolution. Although it offers incredible new creative opportunities, for some it may also bring unwelcome change and personal disappointment. But it is about a lot more than cuts. It is about an idea – an idea of what the BBC could become and the new value it could deliver to the British public. Amid the alarms and excursions of the next few days, it is an idea to keep hold of and believe in.

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