Dead end?

• The traditional concept of business as a “winner takes all” contest is giving way to a realisation that in the networked economy, companies need to both co-operate and compete. This perspective will need company to come up with business strategies that try to create maximum value in the marketplace. However, it seems to me that the co-opetition relationship between newspaper company and search engine sites such as Google and Yahoo is that newspaper companies are always in an inferior position. Even though they move their advertising revenue to online environment, the online ad revenue seems not grow fast enough to replace what they lost in the old media as the AJR article mentioned.

• Different media might need different model after a thorough assessment of a company’s network of players and a deep understanding of the business environment. An article I read (A framework for analyzing emerging business models: Cases of China’s media industry), proposes a participation business model concept after reviewing the existing perspectives of IT business model. The model consists of five dimensions:

1. information technology
2. business environment
3. value
4. the firm in terms of capability and resources
5. firm boundary

• This model might be able to be adopted to newspapers’ online sites due to the technology-driven environment and the participatory features employed by newspaper company. There should be a way out for not being in an inferior position in the relationship with those search engine giants. Can newspaper company find out new open ad networks or new ad models that could reform the relationships?