Escaping the Internet Commodity Trap

by Rowan Gibson

The Internet is like a black hole that relentlessly sucks in, digitizes and democratizes content of every kind. While that may be generally good news for consumers (hey, look at all the great stuff we can now get for free), it has turned out to be unbelievably bad news for the content providers. Ask anyone in the print media business, or the music business, or the movie business. For at least the last decade, industries that primarily produce content have been struggling hard to find a viable new financial model in a world where internet users (particularly the young generation) don't expect to pay for anything they read, listen to, or watch. As one popular mantra puts it: "Content is no longer king". The fact is, content distribution is now king. Power has shifted to the content aggregators - think Google, YouTube, Digg.com or iTunes - and to new media platforms like Amazon's Kindle reader or the Apple iPad. So how exactly are content providers supposed to make money in an era of rampant digital commoditization? The only option they have left is to innovate like never before; to reinvent their industry business models before they become obsolete.

I remember talking to Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine, back in 1995 about the future of the Web. He told me he viewed the Internet as a "planetary-sized copying machine" and added that "trying to stop copying on the Net is impossible." Indeed, within a week of my latest book "Innovation to the Core" being published in Chinese, there were at least two websites in China offering a digital version of the book for illegal download. Consumers clearly win - why buy the physical book when you can get the digital file for free? But in terms of book sales and royalties, the author (i.e. me!) and the publishers lose out entirely.

That's why the book publishing industry is feverishly exploring a variety of new business models. One option is to sell eBooks direct to customers, cutting out middlemen like distributors and retailers, and building a community around the books and authors. Since eBooks have a relatively low price tag, the hope is that consumers will be willing to pay for the genuine article (a la iTunes) rather than download an illegal copy, especially if it comes with social-media-enabled tools that help them discuss and share the book with others. Another option is to make the eBook itself a richer multimedia experience (with audio, video, hyperlinks and so forth) rather than just a text-based medium. Instead of embedding all of these media in a single digital file (which would still be relatively easy to copy and distribute illegally), publishers could give consumers a code when they purchase the book that offers exclusive access to a dynamic, integrated online application environment.

A similar challenge faces today's music business. Over the last decade, music labels, retailers, and the artists themselves have seen their revenues fall off a cliff in an era when teenagers can - and do - get all the music they want for free. Last year, 95% of music downloads were still from illegal file-sharing sites. And although Apple is now the world's biggest music retailer, its iTunes store has never been a massive revenue producer. Instead, it simply serves as a provider of low-cost content for the iPod, helping to drive sales of Apple's premium-priced music player. So far, the latest trend - cloud-based, streaming music sites like Spotify, Rhapsody and Pandora - has not been very helpful to the music industry either. Until now, these sites have employed a free-to-users, ad-supported model which doesn't generate much money for the labels or the artists. As an example, it's estimated that a million plays of Lady Gaga's popular song "Poker Face" on Spotify only earned her a paltry $167.

Frankly, I'm not too worried about the artists because most of them make their money these days on concert revenue and merchandising, not on the sale of recordings. And since people go to live concerts to hear artists performing songs they already know, it's actually in the artists' interests to have their music distributed as widely as possible, even if it's for free, in order to generate a lot of fans. Yet what about the music labels? How can they possibly compete against free downloads? Only by finding innovative new ways to add value. That's what MusicDNA is all about. It's a new digital file format that contains not just music but additional content such as lyrics, images and interesting info like interviews, tour schedules, or updates to the artists' social network pages. Anyone who downloads the file illegally would miss out on all these extras. So MusicDNA offers hope that the industry can open up new revenue streams. It may also point the way forward for Hollywood studios as they look for ways to battle illegal movie downloads.

Another victim of the Internet commodity trap has been the traditional news media industry. According to a new survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, more Americans now get their news from the Internet than from newspapers, and three-fourths say they primarily learn of news via updates on social media sites like Twitter. So as readers (closely followed by advertisers) make a mass exodus from print to digital media, 'The Press' as we know it seems to be going the way of the dinosaur. In the face of mounting bankruptcies, mass layoffs and plunging advertising sales, some publishers have already thrown in the towel. As an example, McGraw-Hill recently signaled their despair by selling off BusinessWeek at the bargain basement price of less than $5 million.

So is there any hope for this ailing industry? Some think it might still be possible to go back to the old 'paid content' model. Rupert Murdoch, illustrious media mogul of News Corporation, has been making headlines over the last year with his plans to erect a pay wall around his media. And, if it works, others will almost certainly follow. An analogy could be the advent of cable TV in the 1960s and 1970s. At first, very few believed that anyone would be willing to actually pay for TV shows and movies after spending decades watching them for free. But today the average household in North America pays about $50 a month for Pay-TV, so why shouldn't the same principle work for the Internet? There is also new hope on the horizon in the form of emerging digital media platforms like Kindle and Apple iPad, that promise to bring fresh revenues to the news industry by charging readers to access publications in an exciting new way.

Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, has co-founded a company called Journalism Online to help newspapers find new payment models. These range from micropayments - where readers pay for individual stories - to "freemium" models like the one used by the Financial Times, where readers can view 10 free pages every 30 days.

One of Rupert Murdoch's properties, The Wall Street Journal already charges readers US$119 a year for an online subscription. The WSJ is also experimenting with a new kind of media mix that takes it beyond the written word. Last September, its Digital Group rolled out News Hub, a twice-daily video news series. In January The Wall Street Journal Network delivered a record 5.5 million streams, with about a million or so views being generated by News Hub. This February the group launched Digits, a video series focused on technology which streams live each weekday, and plans are now in the works for several other original live series.

As whole industries see their traditional business models sucked into the Internet commodity trap, their only hope of escape has become radical innovation. For content providers of every stripe, success and survival in the future will be based on the ability to fundamentally rethink, re-imagine and reinvent themselves by innovating around who they serve, what they provide, how they provide it, how they make money, and how they differentiate from the rest. Stewart Brand's maxim may have famously stated that "information wants to be free", which is at the heart of utopian Internet democracy, but the cold reality is that every business has to make money. That means that whether you produce books, newspapers, magazines, music, movies or TV shows, somebody somewhere has to pay somehow. Figuring out who that could be - and how the financial model would work - is one the greatest business battles of our age.


Related Articles - "Content is No Longer King" - Part 1 - Part 2 - by Stephen Shapiro


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Rowan Gibson is widely recognized as one of the world's leading experts on enterprise innovation. He is co-author of the bestseller "Innovation to the Core" and a much in-demand public speaker around the globe. On Twitter he is @RowanGibson.

How Profitable are the iPad and Kindle?

by Idris Mootee

How much money are Apple and Amazon making from selling the iPad and the Kindle?

Get ready for the iPad to come to an Apple store near you, and for iTunes TV show downloads. Apple will be offering US TV shows for $1 each, as reported by the Financial Times. This coincides with the scheduled release of the iPad sometime in April in an attempt to boost adoption and pull sales through the channel. TV episodes are normally $1.99 for standard-definition and $2.99 for high-definition through iTunes. There was talk before the iPad launch that Apple might at last introduce an iTunes TV show subscription service, but it never happened. I am sure that is still on the table, but there are no further details about when this could come together.

Some wonder how much money Apple can make with the iPad. Obviously the higher end models are usually more profitable for Apple, and the iPad is no exception. I've done some quick and dirty research with OEM suppliers and whipped up some estimates. The high-end iPad model with 3G and 64 GB of storage will retail at $829 and produce a profit of $455 for Apple (and retailers), while the low-end iPad model with 16GB of storage (and no 3G) will retail at $499 and bring a profit of $213. My assumptions for marketing and customer support costs total $15. I have not included in the calculations any volume discounts that Apple might grant to corporate or educational buyers.



I have yet to confirm the components configuration but am using industry's current suppliers' prices. These costs will come down when volume increases, and memory prices fluctuate. The display is the most expensive component, followed by the NAND flash memory. If you drop your iPad, I am guessing the replacement cost would be $250-$270, although the net cost is $76 excluding labor. I've also included a quick comparison with the Kindle DX, which is not an apple-to-apple comparison, and is just there for reference. Kindle doesn't have many of the expensive components that the iPad has, but is an elegantly designed book reader. Remember the basic rule of design? Make sure you do at least one thing really, really good. Kindle makes the downloading experience so easy. Anywhere in the world, your 3G can work to download books in the background.

All cost calculations here are based on our estimates only, not sources from Apple or Amazon and no one has confirmed if these numbers are close or off. I think they are close.

Considering the Kindle DX selling for $489 produces a profit of $297. There are costs for some free content not included in the Kindle DX costs. There will likely be many iPad clones in the market selling in the $180-$250 range. The margin for iPad clones will be as thin as $30-$40, but you can't really compare the iPad with those poor cousins. Let's see what the iPad's net contribution to Apple will be by the end of the year.


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Idris Mootee is the CEO of idea couture, a strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is the author of four books, tens of published articles, and a frequent speaker at business conferences and executive retreats.

Real Reason Amazon Should Acquire Netflix

by Ric Merrifield

Amazon and Netflix might be great together, but not for the reasons you might think.

The way I see this, it's a little bit like peanut butter and chocolate, two great tastes you might not expect to go well together. People are talking about the possible acquisition of video company Netflix by Amazon, and they are speculating that it has to do with movies and streaming media. Maybe, but I don't think that's why this acquisition would be so powerful, and I am frankly surprised I haven't heard more people talking about this.

Here's why.

One of the biggest mistakes I think Amazon has been making all along is ignoring the buying history of customers. They never recommend anything to me based on my buying history. They tell me what other people have bought when I buy a certain book or a tent or a squash racket, but they don't seem to really pay attention to what I buy and what I like. And I buy a LOT on Amazon. They are crazy to have ignored this for so long.

By contrast, Netflix has the most incredible recommendation process ever. While I do have to make the effort to rate movies I have watched (irrespective of whether I watched them through Netflix) based on what I have liked and what I haven't liked, they have the ability to say, for example, that for a movie like Pulp Fiction, while the average viewer gave it three and a half stars out of five, based on my history and preferences, they think I would like it much more, on the order of four and a half stars. What's amazing to me is that they are always right, and I have really unusual taste in movies.

Back to peanut butter and chocolate - if Amazon could use the Netflix recommendation engine innovations to do a better job of tracking my purchases and preferences and recommending everything from books to movies to music to running shoes, it would be amazing.

Is it worth it? Well as of today, Netflix is worth about $3.22 billion, according to Wall Street, and Amazon is about 16 times bigger at $52 billion and to have this incredible way to connect with customers and help them find what they will really like even before they know about it, that would be a huge, much needed, boost for Amazon. The lift in revenue would be significant - just ask anyone in retail about how much upselling is done at the point of purchase.

Overdue rethinking at Amazon, but a great match. I really hope it happens.

P.S. It makes for an interesting side note that if Amazon does buy Netflix, that would probably put founder and CEO Reed Hastings on the board, and he's already on the board of Microsoft. Would he stay on the board of Microsoft?


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Ric Merrifield is known at the "Business Scientist" at Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, WA and is the author of "Rethink". He blogs about ways to rethink through getting out of what he calls "the 'how' trap".

The Decade's Top Performing CEOs

by Adam Hartung

I was intrigued when I read on the Harvard Business Review web site "Do we celebrate the wrong CEOs?" The article quickly pointed out that many of the best known CEOs - and often named as most respected - didn't come close to making the list of the top 100 best performing CEOs. Some of those on Barron's list of top 30 most respected that did not make the cut as best performing include Immelt of GE, Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, Palmesano of IBM and Tillerson of Exxon Mobil. It did seem striking that often business people admire those who are at the top of organizations, regardless of their performance.

I was delighted when HBR put out the full article "The Best Performing CEOs in the World." And it is indeed an academic exercise of great value. The authors looked at CEOs who came into their jobs either just before 2000, or during the decade, and the results they obtained for shareholders. There were 1,999 leaders who fit the timeframe. As has held true for a long time in the marketplace, the top 100 accounted for the vast majority of wealth creation - meaning if you were invested with them you captured most of the decade's return - while the bulk of CEOs added little value and a great chunk created negative returns. (It does beg the question - why do Boards of Directors keep on CEOs who destroy shareholder value - like Barnes of Sara Lee, for example? It would seem something is demonstrably wrong when CEOs remain in their jobs, usually with multi-million dollar compensation packages, when year after year performance is so bad.)

The list of "Top 50 CEOs" is available on the HBR website. This group created 32% average gains every year! They created over $48.2B of value for investors. Comparatively, the bottom 50 had negative 20% annual returns, and lost over $18.3B. As an investor, or employee, it is much, much better to be with the top 5% than to be anywhere else on the list. However, only 5 of the top best performers were on the list of top 50 highest paid - demonstrating again that CEO pay is not really tied to performance (and perhaps at least part of the explanation for why business leaders are less admired now than the previous decade.)

Consistent among the top 50 was the ability to adapt. Especially the top 10. Steve Jobs of Apple was #1, a leader and company I've blogged about several times. As readers know, Apple went from a niche producer of PCs to a leader in several markets completely unrelated to PCs under Mr. Jobs' leadership. His ability to keep moving his company back into the growth Rapids by rejecting "focus on the core" and instead using White Space to develop new products for growth markets has been a model well worth following. And in which to be invested.

Similarly, the leaders of Cisco, Amazon, eBay and Google have been listed here largely due to their willingness to keep moving into new markets. Cisco was profiled in my book Create Marketplace Disruption for its model of Disruption that keeps the company constantly opening White Space. Amazon went from an obscure promoter of non-inventoried books to the leader in changing how books are sold, to the premier on-line retailer of all kinds of products, to the leader in digitizing books and periodicals with its Kindle launch. eBay has to be given credit for doing much more than creating a garage sale - they are now the leader in independent retailing with eBay stores. And their growth of PayPal is on the vanguard of changing how we spend money - eliminating checks and making digital transactions commonplace. Of course Google has moved from a search engine to a leader in advertising (displacing Yahoo!) as well as offering enterprise software (such as Google Wave), cloud applications to displace the desktop applications, and emerging into the mobile data/telephony marketplace with Android. All of these company leaders were willing to Disrupt their company's "core" in order to use White Space that kept the company constantly moving into new markets and GROWTH.

We can see the same behavior among other leaders in the top 10 not previously profiled here. Samsung has moved from a second rate radio/TV manufacturer to a leader in multiple electronics marketplaces and the premier company in rapid product development and innovation implementation. Gilead Sciences is a biopharmaceutical company that has returned almost 2,000% to investors - while the leaders of Merck and Pfizer have taken their companies the opposite direction. By taking on market challenges with new approaches Gilead has used flexibility and adaptation to dramatically outperform companies with much greater resources - but an unwillingness to overcome their Lock-ins.

Three names not on the list are worth noting. Jack Welch was a great Disruptor and advocate of White Space (again, profiled in my book). But his work was in the 1990s. His replacement (Mr. Immelt) has fared considerably more poorly - as have investors - as the rate of Disruption and White Space has fallen off a proverbial cliff. Even though much of what made GE great is still in place, the willingness to Defend & Extend, as happened in financial services, has increased under Mr. Immelt to the detriment of investors.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are now good friends, and also not on the list. Firstly, they created their investor fortunes in previous decades as well. But in their cases, they remained as leaders who moved into the D&E world. Microsoft has become totally Locked-in to its Gates-era Success Formula, and under Steve Ballmer the company has done nothing for investors, employees - or even customers. And Berkshire Hathaway has spent the last decade providing very little return to shareholders, despite all the great press for Mr. Buffett and his success in previous eras. Each year Mr. Buffett tells investors that what worked for him in previous years doesn't work any more, and they should not expect previous high rates of return. And he keeps proving himself right. Until both Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway undertake significant Disruptions and implement considerably more White Space we should not expect much for investors.

This has been a tough decade for far too many investors and employees. As we end the year, the list of television programs bemoaning how badly the decade has gone is long. Show after show laments the poor performance of the stock market, as well as employers. We end the year with official unemployment north of 10%, and unofficial unemployment some say near 20%. But what this HBR report tells us is that it is possible to have a good decade. We need leaders who are willing to look to the future for their planning (not the past), obsess about competitors to discover market shifts, be willing to Disrupt old Success Formulas by attacking Lock-in, and using White Space to keep the company in the growth Rapids. When businesses overcome old notions of "best practice" that keeps them trying to Defend & Extend then business performs marvelously well. It's just too bad so few leaders and companies are willing to follow The Phoenix Principle.

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Adam Hartung, author of "Create Marketplace Disruption", is a Faculty and Board member of the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management, Managing Partner of Spark Partners, and writes for "Forbes" and the "Journal for Innovation Science."

2010 - Year of the Man Purse

by Braden Kelley

I've been trying to decide whether to make any 2010 predictions, and I never thought that this would end up being the one that I chose, but here goes:

2010 will be the year of the man purse - thanks to the proliferation of netbooks, e-readers, and a new generation of tablets launching this year from Apple, Plastic Logic, Google, and others.

It probably won't happen in the first half of the year, but by the time back-to-school and christmas roll around, man purses will finally start to catch on.

Some people will call it a satchel to make themselves feel more manly, and others will see no shame in calling it a man purse, but the fact remains that people will want a way to keep close at hand the gadgets that they are beginning to see as an extension of themselves.

Way back in 2006 celebrities including Robert Downey Jr., David Beckham, and Cuba Gooding Jr. were using man purses, but they didn't cross the chasm because there wasn't enough value created for the average joe. But now, don't be surprised if by the end of 2010 you see more celebrities like possibly Shaquille O'Neil, LeBron James, or Chad OchoCinco sporting a man purse to help carry the gadgets they choose to use to connect with their fans.

For my money, the biggest unknown is not whether man purses catch on, but which devices will be their main residents. Which devices will earn the right to be worn?

Apple is not going to have this market to themselves, no matter how cool their tablet might be.

So, what kind of device will Google come up with?

Can Amazon counter with something to keep the Kindle relevant?

What do you think?

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Apple Tablet Sneak Preview

by Braden Kelley

Following on from my article on what innovation an Apple Tablet might offer and Idris Mootee's article on Apple's 3D efforts for gaming, I bring you a video sneak preview of some of the innovation an Apple tablet might offer.

This isn't of course exactly what an Apple tablet (or iSlate) might look like, but it gives you an idea of one application type that an Apple device might offer, and it shows the further disruption coming to the book, magazine, newspaper, and television industries.





You can see in the video that in such a device, even more so than on the traditional web, that magazine publishers now need to have video, and merge or partner with people that produce video on the same topic. ESPN is particularly well-positioned for this type of new content consumption environment because they already have a print magazine, a web property, and content from several television channels that they can bring together into a seamless experience. It is ironic that Sports Illustrated is helping people imagine a world that ESPN is more likely to dominate than they are.

Such device capabilities will also raise the bar for what it means to publish a book, as the potential to incorporate images, video, slide shows, and mini-applications more easily will offer the opportunity for authors to better address visual and kinesthetic learners than ever before.

You can also see the possibilities to design such a device to extend television and gaming experiences beyond the main screen and make television more interactive than ever before.

At the same time, if Apple launches such a tablet device, it will still bring with it the ability to play music, video, and games in the same ways that people do today with their iPod Touch, iPhone, Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, or portable DVD player. And, if they find the right screen, Apple will likely offer the first compelling portable High-Definition (HD) entertainment experience.

With the right technology, as you see in the video, an Apple Tablet may be able to offer every single type of entertainment in a convenient way in a single, portable device (including web browsing with a mobile broadband connection).

Final thought: With such a device, there is also no reason why you couldn't get location-based services with text, audio, and video content at museums, theaters, sporting venues, theme parks, and more - to enhance any physical world experience in new ways.

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Electronic Readers Hit the Big Time

Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, Barnes & Noble Nook

by Kevin Roberts

Fear of new technology is not new. In 1982, the king of all Hollywood lobbyists, Jack Valenti, told the US Congress:


"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."


Hysteria aside, the movie industry was utterly convinced that the advent of video cassettes would destroy the film industry. 30 years on, video and DVD have had the opposite effect - far from undermining the industry, they are integral to its ongoing profitability. How could Hollywood keep producing so many films, at such great cost and such variable quality without the "straight to DVD" option? Even the notorious box-office bomb, Waterworld, almost broke even in the end, thanks to DVD sales.

There has been similar angst about the fate of books and the publishing industry since the arrival of the Internet and new technology like e-readers. In 2007, the US National Endowment for the Arts reported a "remarkable decline" of American reading habits, its chairman saying that it would damage the civic, political and economic fabric of the country. The New Yorker chimed in, quoting sociologists who claimed that "reading for pleasure will one day be the province of a special 'reading class', much as it was before the arrival of mass literacy." The Boston strangler strikes again!

E-readers are all the rage this holiday season. Industry experts forecast that Amazon will sell 900,000 Kindles in the last two months of 2009. The Sony Reader and Barnes & Noble Nook, which sold-out before it even hit the shelves, are also on a tear. There was a lot of skepticism about e-readers in the first couple of years, and a lot of doomsayers who thought they spelled the end of the written word.

The truth is that technology has ended the monopoly of bound, mass-produced manuscripts we call books, and expanded choice for readers. We can read on the computer screen, on dedicated e-readers like Kindle and Nook or on our cell-phones.

We love books for the stories and the emotional power, the insights and inspirations. Who ever puts down a great book and says, "Wow, I loved the paper-stock, and the font was awesome!"

People who love reading will read more than ever before - I know I do.

Circumstances, mood and moment will determine how and what we read - the Kindle is great for plane trips or train-rides; the cell-phone works well for a quick catch-up with emails or news, and nothing (for me, at least) will beat the pleasures of a book on a beach, or a bookshop on a rainy afternoon.


Editor's note: Will Apple go after the e-reading market with the rumored Apple tablet?

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Four Quadrants of Innovation

Incremental versus Disruptive

by Hutch Carpenter

I recently wrote up a post, "Innovation Perspectives - No Shooting Stars." In it, I discussed the issue of organizations myopically focusing on only disruptive innovations to the exclusion of more incremental or sustaining innovations.

In doing more research on the subject, I began thinking about the dynamics that apply when a firm pursues different kinds of innovation. A post by Venkatesh Rao, Disruptive versus Radical Innovations, was very useful for distinguishing between disruptive and radical innovations.

Building on that, I wanted a framework for delineating innovations based on their technology and business impacts. Because they're not necessarily the same. The four quadrants below describe the dynamics for innovations according to their technology and market impacts:



In each quadrant, there are different rationales and issues that apply. Let's take a look.

Existing Tech, Manage Existing Market

The lower left quadrant represent innovations that leverage existing technology, and service existing customers. This is every day innovation. The block-n-tackle innovation that keeps companies nimble and operating at rates above industry averages.

Example? See how Wal-Mart improved the fuel efficiency of its vehicle fleet:


"Wal-Mart has taken a number of steps, including the installation of diesel Auxiliary Power Units on all its trucks, and applying aerodynamic skirting. On the tire side, Wal-Mart is working with super single tires. and is testing nitrogen-filled tires and an automatic filling process to maintain constant tire air pressure."


Improving the customer experience is also a critical opportunity. In an era of social-media empowered customers impacting your brand, the consequences of failing to improve the customer experience are higher than ever.

But this quadrant is the one often pooh-poohed by many in innovation. I like the way PriceWaterhouseCoopers puts it in this blog post:


"An unintended consequence of the Innovators Dilemma has been that companies have begun believing that unless they were pursuing a strategy of seeking disruptive innovations, they were somehow losing out."


Wal-Mart's efforts have paid off. The retailer has held relatively strong during the Great Recession, as seen in its stock price. And Toyota famously gathered over million ideas a year from its employees to emerge as a global leader in the automotive industry.

Existing Tech, Create New Market

In this quadrant, existing technology is leveraged to create a new revenue streams. This is the quadrant where the following phrase applies:


"Good artists borrow. Great artists steal."


The simple application of a technology that serves one purpose toward a different purpose can be disruptive from a market perspective. It's not a large technological leap. It's the intelligent application of what's already at hand.

Twitter is a great example. The technology itself is...simple. Web form. Subscription model. Limit to 140 characters. Yet it's revolutionized the way people share and find information, causing Techcrunch's MG Siegler to compare it to a modern day Walter Cronkite. All for a simple little web app. Here's what WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg says about Twitter:


"Whether the Twitter team intended it or not, they've built a killer and highly addictive reader platform with dozens of interesting UIs on top of it."


The thing with these innovations is that they are very much a market-determined disruption. This isn't some sort of EUREKA! the moment the technology is rolled out of the labs. It takes the market to say that it's disruptive.

Clayton Christensen (Innovator's Dilemma) types of innovation will often fall in this quadrant. Existing technologies applied in new ways to address the lower end of the market.

Venkatesh Rao has a great perspective on this quadrant:


"In fact, in most documented cases of disruption, the disruptive innovation was a minor/incremental change and well within the technical capabilities of the incumbent (and was often taken to market by a renegade spin off from the original company)."


This quadrant is the best one for producing organic growth for companies. It has lower risk, but produces meaningful revenue growth.

Radical Tech, Create New Market

If any one quadrant defines the popular view of innovation, it's this one. And that's not without good reason. In the previous quadrant, existing technologies are applied to new markets. Well, existing technologies have to come from somewhere. That's this quadrant.

This is the cool stuff that the press writes about. Check out AT&T's Technology Showcase for a great example of some of these new technologies.

Amazon's Jeff Bezos has done well in this quadrant. His latest innovation, the Kindle, is an example. It includes a new "electronic ink". Ability to read text aloud. It's incredibly thin profile.

And it's paying off. Amazon reports that the Kindle set a new sales record this November. Which points to the Kindle as a strong new revenue stream down the road, and a new source of sales for Amazon's book sales. A home run in this quadrant.

These types of innovations are important for maintaining the long-term growth rates of companies. They provide needed growth, replenishing changes in existing markets.

Which leads us to the final quadrant...

Radical Tech, Manage Existing Market

There are times a company's business is under attack, and it needs to address changing behaviors in its market. Innovations in this quadrant share the high risk profile of the previous quadrant, but they have a defensive nature to them. They don't seek to find new opportunities, they seek to address changes in customer behavior.

Hulu strikes me as an example of this. A joint venture of NBC, Fox and ABC, Hulu lets users view shows on computers. This initiative addresses the emerging market shift away from televisions to viewing on all sorts of devices. It's a better answer for this shift than the music industry initially had for the proliferation of MP3 songs on various P2P sites.

Gary Hamel has noted the increasing volatility of markets across the globe. Customers have better access to information about new options, and are willing to shift their spending more quickly. With this dynamic, expect some increase in activity for innovations in this quadrant.

Companies Need a Portfolio of Innovation Opportunities

In a recent Accenture survey, 58% of executives said their organization is looking for the next silver bullet rather than pursuing a portfolio of opportunities. When I hear that, I think first of the upper right quadrant (radical tech, create new market). These types of innovations are incredibly important, and should be part of a company's innovation efforts.

But there's really a good basis for expanding that view to look at the other types of innovation: technology vs. market, disruptive vs incremental.

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Hutch Carpenter is the Director of Marketing at Spigit. Spigit integrates social collaboration tools into a SaaS enterprise idea management platform used by global Fortune 2000 firms to drive innovation.

Amazon Gets an 'A' for Innovation

by Steve McKee

Retail sales are projected to decline this holiday season for the second year in a row, an occurrence unprecedented in the entire history of the federal government keeping statistics on such things. Online retailers will continue to face stiff pricing pressure, as they have for more than a year. Free shipping has become almost the ante in such a competitive environment.

That's why Amazon's shipping program, Amazon Prime, is so impressive. For a company that ships 100 percent of its products, finding a way to neutralize pressure on shipping costs is no small thing--especially when it's competing with Walmart, which offers its online customers 97 cent shipping on many products, or the option to pick up their orders at a nearby store for free.

Two million people have become members of Amazon Prime, paying $79 for automatic two-day shipping on all of their purchases. Not surprisingly, they tend to be Amazon's most frequent customers, which means they're still getting a pretty good deal. But the program helps ensure they'll turn to Amazon first when they have a new purchase occasion, and the numbers indicate they increase their spending with the company some 20 percent after signing up.

Just goes to show you that innovation isn't the exclusive purview of the R&D department. While many online retailers have thrown in the towel on shipping charges, Amazon found a way offset them while increasing order flow. The company took one of its biggest lemons and turned it into a refreshing beverage.

Makes me wonder about the bitter aspects of my industry and how how my company might do something to sweeten them up. What about yours?

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Steve McKee is a BusinessWeek.com columnist, marketing consultant, and author of "When Growth Stalls: How it Happens, Why You're Stuck, and What To Do About It." Learn more about him at www.WhenGrowthStalls.com and at http://twitter.com/whengrowthstall.

Does BN Nook Compete with Amazon or Starbucks?

by Steve McKee

There has been a flurry of news lately about Barnes & Noble's new e-reader, the Nook. It will compete head on with Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader, offering additional features such as limited book sharing and newspaper subscriptions. If successful, of course, those features will be matched by the Nook's competitors, just as Barnes & Noble has matched their price points.

It's fascinating to watch these three powerful companies--the dominant bricks-and-mortar bookseller, the dominant online bookseller, and a long-dominate electronic industry player - compete in this new arena. And word is that Apple's e-reader isn't far behind, which will further mix things up (and will be good for us all).
I couldn't help noticing, however, a little aside in a recent Wall Street Journal article about the Nook. The article was talking about how Nook users would be able to receive discounts and other special offers when they walk into the store, a smart use by Barnes & Noble of its one true competitive advantage over Amazon. But the piece went on to say this: "Eventually, the company says, customers will be able to read entire e-books for free inside the physical store."

Read entire e-books for free? Why would Barnes & Noble want to give away content? How's this for a reason: the company may have up its strategic sleeve the idea that it can become the other Third Place.

Starbucks has always been an appealing place to linger, and many people go there to enjoy a good read as they nurse their lattes (most Starbucks locations sell a handful of newspapers and books to encourage just such behavior). While Barnes & Noble has in recent years been adding coffee bars to many of its locations, they have always seemed to be somewhat of an afterthought and secondary to the company's primary purpose of selling books. But by offering free in-store content with the Nook, Barnes & Noble seems to clearly be saying that this is they place they want people to linger. And Since none of us can be in two places at one time, Starbucks and Barnes & Noble may increasingly butt heads.

It's a fascinating world in which we live, where two previously unrelated companies can wake up and find themselves arch-competitors, and it's fun to watch such changing dynamics unfold. Keep your eye on Barnes & Noble as it continues to take advantage of its physical locations (the one thing its current big competitor, Amazon, can't match). In combatting one foe it may have just picked a fight with another.

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Steve McKee is a BusinessWeek.com columnist, marketing consultant, and author of "When Growth Stalls: How it Happens, Why You're Stuck, and What To Do About It." Learn more about him at www.WhenGrowthStalls.com and at http://twitter.com/whengrowthstall.

Content is No Longer King (Part 2)

by Stephen Shapiro

In an earlier blog entry on content, readers provided a number of interesting comments. If you haven't already read that article (and the comments), you may want to do so in order to understand this new article.

Many did not agree with my point of view. And that is great. I only wanted to stimulate some conversation.

Let me first address some of the comments (and I appreciate the time that everyone took in writing comments). The comment is in italics with my response following.


"I wonder if the Kindle model requires a subsidy to offset the upfront cost of technology development and/or design manufacturing." Two thoughts come to mind. 1) No one has an issue paying $150 for an iPod even though the cost of the music is pretty much the same. 2) As new generations of eBook readers hit the market, prices will drop. Several are now on the market for under $200.


"The reason distribution appears to be the source of value isn't distribution itself but the monopolistic nature of new distribution channels." Indeed. And that's my point. Those who aggregate are the ones who create positions of power. The content creators are not the power players. And the individual publishers certainly aren't.


"If content was truly losing its ability to create value, Comcast would not try to purchase NBC - they might instead bid for Netflix or for a content delivery device company like Roku." Great point. The reason why I mentioned Comcast's acquisition of NBC was not to say that it was a good or bad move. I was only trying to point out that a few years ago, the networks were the ones doing the acquiring. Now the distributors are in a position to buy the content creators. It will be interesting to see what this Comcast deal does to Hulu.


"It's the publisher that is not essential anymore - the content creators are also becoming content publishers due to technology." Indeed, the publisher is now playing the role of middleman and is going away in many respects - or needs to play a very different role. As you suggest, content creators do have the option to go straight to the consumer now. And we are seeing a democratization of content. Having said that, content creators will still want to push their content to content aggregators - the source of the eyeballs. The reason why Google is so successful is that they are currently a significant player in how content is found.


Some interesting things have evolved in the past week since I wrote the first article. It appears that the big innovations are being developed by the content aggregators (not that that is surprising).

Google Digital Books: Google is offering eBooks on out of print books that are no longer subject to copyright restrictions. They scanned nearly 2 million books and will be offering them in digital form for about $8.

HP/Amazon paperback books: Soon after Google's announcement, HP and Amazon.com indicated that they will offer print on demand paperback books for these out of print books. A 250 page book from their library of 500,000 can be purchased for about $15. A single copy can be printed in a few minutes.

Book Pricing War: Wal-mart, in an effort to crush Amazon.com, is offering 10 new release books for $10. Well, that was until Amazon said they would offer those same books for $10, at which point Wal-Mart dropped the price to $9. Target joined the price-war, dropping the price to $8.99. This caused Wal-Mart to drop the price to $8.98. According to the WSJ, "The publishing industry is also watching warily to see if the price war will have lasting impact on book pricing and the contracts that publishers sign with authors."

BN Nook eBook Reader: Barnes and Noble, announced the release of their 'Nook' eBook, intended to take on Amazon.com's Kindle. One account says that the Nook is "closer to a printed book than its precursors in some respects, (in that it) allows users to lend their copies of electronic books to any friend who has installed Barnes & Noble's e-reader application on a mobile device or personal computer."

Comcast Premium Channel Streaming: Comcast announced that by end of the year, you will be able to watch popular cable television series such as HBO's "Entourage" and AMC's "Mad Men" on your computer without paying extra. They are reported to be the first cable TV operator to "unlock online access to a slate of valuable cable shows and movies, aiming to replicate what's available on television through video on demand."


Please don't get me wrong. Content is necessary. As an author, I sure hope there is value in what I do. Amazon.com, iTunes, Wal-Mart, Barnes and Noble, and Comcast would not exist without content. So yes, content is important. I just wonder if it is still king.


P.S. As an aside, Andrew Odlyzko published an article entitled "Content is Not King" where he contends (according to Wikipedia) that "1) the entertainment industry is a small industry compared with other industries, notably the telecommunications industry; 2) people are more interested in communication than entertainment; and 3) therefore that entertainment content is not the killer app for the Internet." I realize it is a different topic altogether, but it is interesting nonetheless.

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Stephen Shapiro is the author of three books, a popular innovation speaker, and is the Chief Innovation Evangelist for Innocentive, the leader in Open Innovation.

Content is No Longer King

by Stephen Shapiro

We often hear that content is king. But I wonder if this is still true.

Let's take some very simple examples.

I am sure most of you know that the iPod was not a revolutionary invention. It was merely a new spin on the already existing MP3 player. The real innovation was the integration of the iPod with iTunes. This changed the game. Using this model, the distribution of content became as important as the creators (the musicians) and the publishers (the record labels). Apple is now one of the most powerful and profitable players in the music industry.

I now own an Amazon Kindle. I have to admit, I love it (I'll blog about that another time). But what strikes me is that we are seeing the same 'content distributor as king' dynamics unfold again. In the book business, the author's royalty is a pretty small slice of the pie. I should know because I just signed a two book deal with Penguin's Portfolio imprint.

Here are some illustrative figures for a printed book (kept very simple using made up, yet not far fetched numbers):

• An author can expect about 10% +/- of the retail price of the book. So if the book retails for $25, the author gets $2.50.


• The retailer expects roughly a 50% discount and then they sell it for whatever they can get. If they sell it for a 20% discount, they gross approximately 30% of the price of the book (about $7.50). Their profit is quite a bit less due to overhead costs.


• Finally the publisher gets the remaining 40% or so - about $10 a book. By the time the publisher has covered all of their costs, books that sell poorly can lose them money because they need to pay the editorial staff, the various designers, the printers, and the shipping companies.

As you can see, the creator of the content (the author) gets a small slice. The publisher of the content gets a small slice. And the distributor gets a small slice. The rest of the money is eaten up in various costs.

Enter in the digital age.

Book on Kindle sell for $9.99 as a rule (we'll make it $10 to keep it simple). Let's look at an illustrative breakdown now.

• The author gets 5% of the retail (eBooks typically get a lower royalty) - $0.50. As you can see, an author can make 80% less with a Kindle book.


• The publisher and Amazon split the rest in a way I am not privy to.


• The publisher's costs are lower because they don't need to pay for shipping and printing. They still incur the upfront design and editorial costs.


• Amazon's costs are close to zero. They only need to pay a small amount to Sprint to provide mobile services. No overhead (except maybe some computer servers). No distribution. No warehouses.

In this model, I want to be Amazon. Everything sold is nearly pure profit. The content creator (me) is definitely not the financial king in this model. The publisher does fine. But the distributor appears to be the one in charge.

This concept of distribution as king appears in all areas. I was speaking with a seasoned consultant from the retailing industry. He indicated that a few years ago, the power shifted from the manufacturers to the retailers. Wal-Mart has the lion's share of power in the industry and they now call the shots.

You could argue that Google has a similar position, although their financial model is a bit different (AdWords accounts for most of their profit). But like other distributors, they don't create content. Instead they aggregate content from a variety of sources into one distribution system.

I just read on Friday that Comcast may be buying a 51% stake in NBC from GE. This shows how the power is moving from the creators of the content (the writers) and the publishers of the content (NBC and their production staff) to the distributors of the content - Comcast.

Are you a content creator or you a content publisher? Does someone else control distribution? Or, are there new entrants who might control distribution? Beware. The current and future distributors/aggregators of your content could be one of the most serious threats to your business.

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Stephen Shapiro is the author of three books, a popular innovation speaker, and is the Chief Innovation Evangelist for Innocentive, the leader in Open Innovation.

Blogging Innovation for the Amazon Kindle

Do you have an Amazon Kindle or Kindle DX?

Well, now you can receive Blogging Innovation on your Kindle, including articles from:

• Rowan Gibson
• Stephen Shapiro
• Braden Kelley
• Paul Sloane
• Matthew E May
• Kevin Roberts
• And more than 10 other authors!

Who will be the first to write a review?

Happy Kindle-ing!

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Beyond the Amazon Kindle

I came across a video on BNet on the future of ink. Electronic ink (aka electronic paper) is the display technology powering the Amazon Kindle and pretty much every other serious digital book reader out there. The technology is also being tested with store signage in Wal-Mart and was used to power a multimedia panel on the cover of Esquire. If you're not already familiar with the technology, or if you'd like to see more, watch the video below:



The key question in my mind is not what has the technology been used for so far, but what other imaginitive uses can people come up with that will improve the quality of our lives?

What do you think?

@innovate