Entries tagged with “disruptive technology” from Tools of Change for Publishing
Can XML Help you Avoid a Disruptive Innovation?
Brian O'Leary
October 24, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (5)
|
Listen 
This semester, I'm fortunate to spend my Wednesday nights teaching management to students who are part of NYU's M.S. in publishing program. Although a significant share of the course is given over to management fundamentals, the students are for the most part already working in publishing, so they also look for connections between lessons learned and their real-world application.
One recent class was given over to "managing in periods of change" (always relevant, seemingly more so this semester). Part of the lesson includes a discussion of disruptive innovation, a term coined in the mid-1990s by Joseph Bower and Clayton Christensen to describe upstart innovations that grow to disrupt or destroy the business you are in.
Disruptive innovations typically start out as inferior ways to meet the needs of customers who are currently not served at all or who are over-served by existing options and are open to a simpler or cheaper option. Walking through this description, I was asked for a content-related example.
Maybe I do my best work on my feet (you'd have to ask the class), but I started to describe travel books. "People visit France," I said, "but not all of it. Maybe they want information on just the area around their hotel in Paris ... What's a good restaurant, a trendy bar, a place where you won't pay an arm and a leg for show tickets ...
"Today, you could get this information, but you might have to buy all of three or four different books to combine it. After that, you might go to the Web to get current information on the shows that are scheduled for the day you are in Paris. And then, you'd probably try to print maps to get you from your hotel to wherever you decided was interesting.
"Suppose instead, we created a travel database that you could search using criteria that mattered to you -- proximity to a hotel, a particular neighborhood, a time of year, your preference for trendy bars ... Zagats does this for its database, after all, and still makes printed guides. And maybe you'd buy just the parts you want, download them to your laptop or handheld and head to Paris, lighter, greener and better informed."
A structured approach to content development and management -- XML -- makes it possible to create and serve relevant searchable content.
Someone said, rightly, "But that would hurt (print) book sales." I had to agree. Disruptive innovations fundamentally disrupt the old model. If you're in a market that will be disrupted, the choice isn't whether you get disrupted; it's whether you are one of the firms that disrupts.
Ultimately, XML won't help you avoid a disruptive innovation. Depending on the type of book you publish, XML could provide the vehicle that sponsors the disruption. The choice you make in considering XML (or, to pre-empt my friend bowerbird, some form of structured content) may be between staying with your existing business model until it runs out, or hastening its demise in pursuit of a blended mix of new revenue opportunities.
Technology's "Killer" Distraction
Mac Slocum
July 29, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (3)
|
Listen
A new search engine, Cuil, is attracting the requisite "Google killer" coverage. Thankfully, Seth Godin provides some much-needed perspective:
I have no doubt that someone will develop a useful tool one day that takes time and attention away from Google, but it won't be a search engine. Google, after all, isn't broken, not in terms of solving the iconic "how do I find something online using my web browser" question.
I have no beef with Cuil itself (the handful of queries I ran worked fine), but this "killer" business is another matter. In the history of tech prognostications, has an upstart killer ever successfully terminated its target? More importantly, what possible benefit do any of us get from this type of analysis?
I can only imagine the useful commentary we would see if the killer oeuvre could be stricken from the record. The bombastic flavor-of-the-day cycle might be replaced with actual thoughts about the future of particular applications and their accompanying industries. Perhaps we'd even stop shoehorning lightning-in-a-bottle success stories into unrelated products (e.g. the Kindle/iPod comparisons). And maybe we'd finally see that the exciting developments -- the products and experiments that really stir things up -- come from people who focus on creation rather than dominance.
As Seth eloquently notes:
... success keeps going to people who build new icons, not to those that seek to replace the most successful existing ones.
Digital Change: "Disruptive and Imminent"
Peter Brantley
May 28, 2008
| Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
Listen
Adam Hodgkin lists five reasons why books might go digital, among them: Moore's Law, energy needs, and positive perception of digital content. Hodkin then concludes:
At the moment CEO's and captains of publishing houses feel the need to be cautious and to reassure their markets and their audience that change will be gradual and not disruptive. But if the change is disruptive and imminent the publishing houses who have already geared up for digital distribution and marketing will be at an advantage. I think most CEO's in the business know that, and they also know that they are not too well prepared for it.
- Stay Connected
-
TOC RSS Feeds
News Posts
Commentary Posts
Combined Feed
New to RSS?
Subscribe to the TOC newsletter. 
Follow TOC on Twitter. 
Join the TOC Facebook group. 
Join the TOC LinkedIn group. 
Get the TOC Headline Widget.
- Search
-
