Competition in the Digital Age
There is much discussion of late regarding Amazon's market power in the eBook space. It is probably over 60 percent in the US but I had trouble finding a current, reliable number. The fear is not so much that but how difficult it is for competitors to build traction. There are two main barriers here. …
Continue reading "Where is Amazon's Kindle market power coming from?"
Over at Forbes.com recently I have written a few posts that will likely be of interest to readers here. "Can Apps Transform Learning into Games?" Forbes.com, 13th June 2012. "If World Leaders can Misplace Children, What about the Rest of Us?" Forbes.com, 11th June 2012. "Is There Evidence that Free Ranging on Facebook is Bad for Tweens?" Forbes.com, …
Continue reading "A few posts on children, Facebook and learning apps"
The entrenched market power of existing scholarly publishers haven't stopped innovators from trying to enter with new models. Probably the best known is the Public Library of Science that charges authors between $1350 and $2900 to publish papers depending on the journal. After that, the paper is open access. Elsevier offer the same option but …
There has been much focus on the retail prices of eBooks following the DOJ's investigation into publishers and Apple. Countering that has been an undercurrent of discontent regarding Amazon's monopoly power as a distributor. While it is legitimate to worry about such things, it was a complicated and dynamic situation and so it was tough …
It turns out Apple has an answer to this question: 514,000 in the US. 304,000 of those are either jobs at Apple or at companies that supply them. Another 210,000 are iOS app economy jobs but let's face it, those aren't likely to be full time. So what are we to make of this? The …
HBO is currently a bundled product. To watch Game of Thrones you need a cable subscription. That means that to watch it you either subscribe to a premium package on cable or you pirate. HBO clearly do not make money on the latter and the chances are, if you are not in the US, that …
Today I was fortunate enough to attend a lunch where the speaker was The Economist editor-in-chief, John Micklethwaite. His talked was wide ranging but, not surprisingly, what interested me is the question he received about disruption in his own industry. The Economist, of course, is faring well especially compared with newspapers. He attributed this to …
Continue reading "How agnostic is The Economist about print versus digital?"
First, some disclosure. I hold the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair in Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship here at the Rotman School of Management. Jeff Skoll [picture to the left from the Globe and Mail] endowed the Chair some years back and I'm the third person to hold it. So I am very grateful for that contribution …
Continue reading "Jeff Skoll defines social entrepreneurship"
It isn't every day that you wake up to read about a huge leap forward in technology. That appears to have happened today with a new product -- Leap Motion. Basically, it is Kinect on steriods and open. Watch the video. It looks quite incredible. Indeed, its inventors wrote on their site: "It sounds too …
From Katherine St Asaph, an observation that AdWeek have set up what she calls a 'trollwall' for some articles (see her screenshot to the left). The idea is that you can read the full article if you share it. While this seems like a novel approach compared with a paywall, I have to point out …
Digitopoly 