Thusfar, I think it is safe to say that publishers have had the most to worry about with regard to Amazon's monopsony power rather than authors; and what power there is comes at their own fault for relying continually on DRM restraints. Indeed, on many levels, one can see that Amazon has provided more opportunities …
Continue reading "Amazon's Kindle Unlimited: There may be a danger for authors"
Amazon just made official its Kindle Unlimited service that, for $9.99 per month, offers subscribers unlimited access to, at the moment, 600,000 books (including some big titles like Harry Potter). Basically, this is the Netflix model applied to reading and, from my perspective, it is interesting because I predicted it two years ago in Information …
Continue reading "It's here: Netflix for Books or 'The Library'"
There has been a movement that began with the notion of the anti-commons that suggested that, whatever the other benefits and faults might be with the patent system, a fault that really matters for the operation of the system and for growth prospects (a la endogenous growth theory) is how patents might stifle cumulative or …
Wikipedia is famously open to anyone to edit. In practice, whether your edits sustain themselves depends upon other Wikipedia editors and the enforcement of various norms and rules that have emerged. The WSJ highlighted a new type of Wikipedia editor -- essentially a robot. Sverker Johansson could be the most prolific author you've never heard …
It is now time to fill in the final box of our recent travel across the Entrepreneurial Strategy canvas. Recall that I argued that there were two key dimensions that could assist entrepreneurs in finding the right business model to match with their idea: (i) they could focus on execution or invest in control and …
Over the past two weeks, I have been outlining broad strategic options for entrepreneurs of which a disruption strategy is just one choice. The concept is that a given entrepreneurial idea can be commercialised in many different ways. The key to entrepreneurial strategy is to identify the feasible set of choices available to start-ups and …
Continue reading "Another choice: The Intellectual Property Strategy"
It is always interesting when two famous entrepreneurs disagree on something fundamental. In this case, it is Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel. Here is Marc Andreessen's recent tweet. Something my friend & hero Peter Thiel and I vigorously disagree on: I *love* competition, I think it's invigorating/stimulating/productive. — Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) June 30, 2014 //platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsPut …
Continue reading "The Two Entrepreneurial Paths to Monopoly"
This post is a continuing part of an on-going series on entrepreneurial strategy. The previous posts in the series involved disruptive strategy and are here and here. Recall that the notion of entrepreneurial strategy is based on the foundation that once you have an idea the business model that is matched to commercialise that idea …
Continue reading "Choosing not to disrupt (Embedding in a value chain)"
Yesterday, I argued that start-ups have a choice as to what strategy or business model they select to pair with their idea. In so doing, I looked at their choice to pursue a disruptive strategy which I defined as (a) competing against established firms in the market (as oppose to cooperating or licensing to them) and (b) …
The recent debate over 'disruption theory' has focussed on the over-use of the word 'disruption' and also on whether it can be used to predict the fate of incumbents in various industries. Somewhat lost in that discussion is precisely what disruption means for start-ups. There has been a tendency to think that start-ups should have …
Digitopoly 