Truths about content
inductive rather than deductive. I believe he follows the HBS approach of analysing live cases rather than trying to prescribe the laws of digital change — and quickly be wrong!
He begins by challenging a very old truism in media and entertainment — that content is king. In fact, the title of the book hints at the fact that not content but the connections that companies create and encourage is actually king. Through numerous case studies he illustrates how business managers who fail to understand this truth struggle to establish digital businesses. Getting heard in the massive din of data in the digital world is a non-trivial exercise and people have to focus on this. After that they need to understand how to monetise their connections — again, not easy.
His inductive approach allows him to take examples in the same sector where alternative strategies have succeeded. So Mr Anand will explain why what works for the Economist magazine is different from what has worked for the Schibsted, the Scandinavian newspaper. The Schibsted story is one of using connections to build an unassailable online position in classifieds. All they did to build their position. He goes on to also examine their approach to reinventing their digital newspaper offering — being live, shorter, punchier and in some senses less deep. A sharp contrast with the strategy that the Economist magazine followed of pricing its online offering and refusing to compete with others in either trying to go into breaking news or deep investigative reporting, but rather, always having a consistent point of view on important issues around the globe. There is a clear and sticky market for what they publish with their target base.
He studies Tencent and demonstrates why staying still is not an option, and their continuing evolution. How they have grown by continuing to expand their core and thereby also continuing to deepen the connections they provide. How today “WeChat” is a Chinese habit.
In the end he describes his own journey in respect of creating HBX — HBS’s digital 10-week mini MBA program. How they were falling into the content trap and how they worked consciously to avoid it. The method they used to break the compromise between rich content and wide reach at the same time. How to minimise professor time but not dilute the learning experience by understanding the core elements of the program — high-quality content, student engagement, peer learning, and the right insights. How they grappled with the problem and the early results.
For a rigorous analytical book, The Content Trap is actually easy to read. The stories contain the insight. He forces you to engage in the problem and thereby prepares you to analyse your own situation. That in a sense is also his real purpose. Pushing you to understand that connections are critical but also how you need to think about your own business and the real difficulty in monetising connections. He highlights the importance of recognising that businesses that don’t scale are unlikely to survive.
The book points out some frightening implications, which it does not address. The monopoly power that strong connections can have and how it may drown out alternative content — even if we agree that in a Gramscian sense there has never been real truth in content (The concept of ideological hegemony). The ability to drown out alternative narratives due to such platform power requires an appropriate policy response. What is their power and how to assess and regulate it? Nandan Nilekani is talking about this in respect to individual data today. But the ability of high valuations and the ability to buy out competitors is a further challenge that accentuates this power (remember the $19-billion purchase of WhatsApp with 55 employees by Facebook). Further, what implications does this insight have for different aspects of a company’s strategy? What should its R&D and innovation process incorporate? How does a leader consider and permit smart experimentation and rapid course correction? The answers to these questions are not obvious and require careful consideration so that they do not either throttle innovation or allow monopolies to limit access. All the more, this important book requires a careful read by business leaders and policy makers alike.
The title of the book hints at the fact that not content but the connections that companies create and encourage is actually king
Bharat Anand Penguin Random House 464 pages; ~599