THE CONTENT TRAP

The first book by Harvard Business School professor Bharat Anand that offers an incisive, paradigm-shifting answer to the trillion-dollar question: how can companies monetize free content?

Anand uses fascinating stories from media organizations around the world as they try to cope, survive, and reinvent their businesses. How did the Economist increase revenues from subscription when Newsweek and Time were hemorrhaging? How did Tencent create a cash machine from largely free and virtual products in a market with a GDP per capita ten times lower than the US? And in the midst of an industry revolution, how are we to understand these and other media organizations, their fates, and their markets? Combining insightful analysis with an accessible, humorous tone, Anand juxtaposes the media strategies of The New Yorker and Britney Spears (they’re more alike than you think) and uses analogies like the success of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” and Chuck E. Cheese’s in-house currency to illustrate broader points about Amazon’s dominance and the rise of Netflix.

Casting aside the typical gloomy accounts of inevitable decline, the stories presented are about how traditional media is fighting back and how certain parts of the media have remained relatively untouched despite titanic changes. They are also about the new media organizations and market structures that look as powerful and apparently intimidating as traditional media ever did. Media evolution is not always a celebration of “free”, “media democratization”, or entrepreneurship. Rather, the story unfolding in media markets across the world remains one centered around familiar ideas in business – of power, pricing, and strategy. A revolutionary and much-needed analysis of business strategy — rather than the fears of decline — this book presents a way for media companies to survive and thrive amidst industry-wide upheaval.

Bharat Anand is a Professor in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School, the faculty chair of the HBX initiative, and serves on the HarvardX Faculty Committee. He received an AB in Economics, magna cum laude, from Harvard University, and his PhD in Economics from Princeton University. At Princeton, he was nominated to the Princeton Junior Society of Fellows.