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November 8, 2007
Hollywood wars - part 2
As a follow up to my posting yesterday, I would like to point out Henry Chesbrough's interesting take on the writers strike in his Business Week piece Behind the Hollywood Strike Talks:
What makes the often fractious negotiations particularly interesting this time are the underlying business-model challenges confronting both sides. Business models enable companies (and organizations such as the 12,000-member Writers Guild of America or the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers) to create and capture value. Once established, successful models often take on a life of their own. This can lead to inertia, and a prevailing model can drift out of alignment with the future needs of an industry.
That's what has happened here. The traditional business models of both sides worked well when there were a handful of movie studios and three major TV networks. But now everyone can be a writer or a producer, and every computer is potentially a studio, able to create and publish content. More than 1 billion people on the planet are connected to the Internet, a healthy portion of them via high-speed broadband.
. . .
Both sides need to change some strongly held business models to seize new opportunities—a process that has many risks, but potentially lucrative rewards. However, if Hollywood cannot rise to the challenge, the independent, online creative communities stand ready to pounce. The one thing that seems sure is that neither side has a choice.
Good point!
Posted by Ken Jarboe at November 8, 2007 9:43 AM
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