edithhopegardenjournal

Legacy and born-digital content creators are now approaching tipping points where they will be forced into deep strategic thinking and choices that will affect their future operations. Consideration of the platforms on which they operate, the platform(s) that receives preference, and the income and expenses they will bear will all inform the strategic choices. The growth of digital consumption is forcing content creators to confront issues of offline and online consumption, but also to respond to the rapid growth of consumption on different types of digital devices—especially mobile devices. These changes are moving many firms closer to the tipping points. In deciding how and when strategy needs to be reconsidered, managers need to watch for four critical strategic tipping points. These are points at which significant contemplation and decisions must be made or the enterprises will be put at risk by indecision: 1. When c ontent income surpasses advertising income 2. When d igital incom...

As publishers move more and more content to the Internet, mobile services, and e-readers, these digital activities change the structures and processes of underlying business operations. Many publishers, however, pay insufficient attention to the implications of these changes and thus miss out on many benefits possible with digital operations. This occurs because publishers become focused on issues of content delivery and uncritically accept the fundamental elements of the processes involving platforms and intermediaries. In order to gain the fullest future benefits from the digital environment, however, publishers needs to strategically consider and direct activities involving the users, advertisers, prices, and purposes of their new platforms. In creating business arrangements with platform and service providers and intermediaries, 4 fundamental strategic principles should guide your actions: 1. Control your customer lists . The most important thing you do as a publisher is to create ...

Journalists and technology writers are enamored with communications technology and tend to portray successful technologies as representing large scale trends. We are regularly presented with news stories and promotional materials about the rise of new technologies and about how their uses create social trend that are significantly altering society. The release of the new iPhone was recently featured on network evening news, Blackberry has been heavily discussed because its use by Pres. Obama, and Twitter has been featured in numerous television and newspaper stories. The impression given by coverage is that anyone who doesn’t have an iPhone or Blackberry and anyone who doesn’t Twitter is out of touch with the mainstream and being left out of modern society. These new means of communications offer interesting possibilities, but their consumption needs to be seen realistically. Blackberry, for example, has 14 million subscribers-- about 5 percent of all mobile phone users in the US. iPho...