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Could this be it?

By diggesting some thoughts and reading some more on the subject, I believe I might be on track of finding my so long sought after thesis subject!

This is my main thought that I would like to examine:

What has happened internally to media companies since the introduction of the Internet and thereby thousands of new distribution channels?

In the old days, media companies were all about traditional supply chains where news were produced in one end of the chain, printed and then delivered to the end customer in the other end. Quite straight forward, and the media company could control the entire process.

As the density of offerings have increased with the microprocessor (very cool way of saying that things have changed from “Designing Interactive Strategy: From Value Chains to Value Constellations“) the end customer’s value creation has started to take new forms. Media is consumed in new ways, via new channels (Google News, Digg.com, personal blogs and so on).

The major driver for this change has been the everyday lower external transaction costs of communication which is also the largest driver of organizing in value constellations with several smaller actors instead of in one large firm (Coase, Theory of the Firm).

What I would like to examine is this: Have the media companies (specifically the newspapers) adjusted internally to this transformation (by working more in networks with other actors) or are they still run like they used to be (by doing most of the work in-house and trying to maximize revenue from each additional channel)?

What’s great about this subject is that there is a large amount of data to be collected qualitatively and the end product might actually result in something useful for media companies!

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 11:22 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Helt sant, ska verkligen försöka se till att fokusera in mig rejält innan jag sätter igång och skriver... Är knepigare än jag trodde detta dock :)

    Tror en uppsatsblogg fungerar grymt bra för den egna inspirationen också, att få ventilera lite och förhoppningsvis några smarta kommentarer kan nog göra mycket för slutprodukten. Redan den lilla feedback jag fått hittills har hjälpt mig en hel del faktiskt!
  • Kom ihåg klassikern också - det är lättare skriva en bra uppsats om ett väl begränsat område snarare än ett för brett.

    Nu blir jag inspirerad av dig - ska lägga på ett kol till!
  • Great points Martin! I believe that this might be a good starting ground, but it obviously needs some work before I can present it as a subject to my professor.

    Right now I'm actually thinking of tuning it down a bit and perhaps look at how the internal structure of media companies have changed and do the analysing and conclusions about how the market is changing compared to the media companies afterwards. Perhaps they already have changed accordingly, and if they haven't, what is their reason for this?

    Are new media companies structured like the old ones, or do they work in more of a value constellation manner?

    Just feels like I'm on to something good here, lets see how it develops =)
  • Nice to see that your thoughts are finding a form Niklas!

    "The major driver for this change has been the everyday lower external transaction costs of communication which is also the largest driver of organizing in value constellations with several smaller actors instead of in one large firm (Coase, Theory of the Firm)."

    I've been reading this several times, understand what you mean, but still believe that maybe the heart of the thesis can be described in a more pure way. Is this really the major drivers? Then you might want to mention some other candidates, if so, just for the record.

    Good idea to ventilate your work in public like this - Looking forward to follow your progress!
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