New product development practice is simultaneously creative and grounded in the specific context of the business where you operate as a product manager. There are infinite problems and needs you will uncover in customer discovery, but relatively few of these will be an ideal fit to pursue for your company or organization. Content-based, technology enabled … [Read more...] about Developing Content-Based Products for Learning and Research Part 1: Understand Your Strategic, Technical and Go-To-Market Context
New Product Development is Hard: Eight Steps for Developing Content-Based Products for Learning and Research
New product development is hard. The difficulty in new product development is not in addressing an unmet need with a new product, for unmet needs are limitless. The difficulty in new product development is committing to the discipline of patient discovery and in resisting the pressure to conform to delivery dates and top-down product cultures that prize the … [Read more...] about New Product Development is Hard: Eight Steps for Developing Content-Based Products for Learning and Research
Content Licensing Strategy Part 4: Determine If You Can Demand an Exclusive with a Distribution Partner
The alternative to an optimized multi-partner, multi-channel content licensing and distribution strategy is to develop long-term, exclusive partnerships for distribution in all or select channels in which your publishing or distribution business participates. In this six part series on content licensing strategy, I focus almost entirely on the tactics and … [Read more...] about Content Licensing Strategy Part 4: Determine If You Can Demand an Exclusive with a Distribution Partner
The Peril of Zero Sum Thinking in Content Distribution Strategy
Throughout my career as a publisher and platform manager licensing and distributing eBooks and streaming video, I have encountered no shortage of publishers and distributors who too easily succumb to the fallacy of zero sum thinking. The basic belief is publisher-direct sales will suffer if the same content is licensed for distribution. The advent of … [Read more...] about The Peril of Zero Sum Thinking in Content Distribution Strategy
Content Licensing Strategy Part 3: Understand all Available Business Models Represented by Channel Partners
In the two prior installments in this series on content licensing strategy, I offered practical guidance on assessing the library channel revenue potential of your catalog, new releases to longtail, and how to identify and evaluate the available channel partners that your publishing or distribution business can align with to address all licensing opportunity … [Read more...] about Content Licensing Strategy Part 3: Understand all Available Business Models Represented by Channel Partners
Content Licensing Strategy Part 2: Establish a Complete Picture of all Available Channel Partners
I fundamentally believe in the opportunity for an ever-expanding pie of licensing distribution revenue, and that concern over competing channel revenue cannibalization is almost always overstated. If you are a publisher of valuable content with the goal of increasing revenue and usage, you have to be willing to experiment and measure and adjust. If you … [Read more...] about Content Licensing Strategy Part 2: Establish a Complete Picture of all Available Channel Partners