Table Of Contentedited by MIKE ROSENBERG & PHILIP H. SEAGER
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Managing Media Businesses
Mike Rosenberg • Philip H. Seager
Editors
Managing Media
Businesses
A Game Plan to Navigate Disruption and
Uncertainty
Editors
Mike Rosenberg Philip H. Seager
IESE Business School IESE Business School
Barcelona, Spain Barcelona, Spain
ISBN 978-3-319-52020-9 ISBN 978-3-319-52021-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52021-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017932894
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
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Who: To media and entertainment executives everywhere,
but especially the Media AMP Class of 2014.
What: Thanks for generously contributing to this book.
Where: New York, Los Angeles, Barcelona.
When: Yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Why: To prove that reports of our death are greatly exaggerated.
How: That depends on you!
Preface
Chances are, we only need to say, “The dress: white and gold or blue and
black?” and you will instantly know what we’re talking about. For a few days
in February 2015, the Great Dress Debate was the reigning topic of conversa-
tion on the planet, dividing public opinion and leading some to experience
“a brief existential crisis over the meaning of color and life and a bout of
embarrassing squealing before some powerful newsroom bosses,” as Terrence
McCoy confessed in The Washington Post [1]. The fact that millions of people
could look at the exact same image and see entirely different realities con-
founded and alarmed people in equal measure.
As part of a recent Advanced Management Program (AMP) in Media &
Entertainment held at IESE Business School, we conducted a similar experiment.
We presented a picture to a group of participants and asked them to describe what
they saw. One saw a Hindu god. Another an African mask. Another insisted it
was a Mexican mask. Everyone saw something completely different.
We gave them an “answer” for what the picture actually was, but that wasn’t
really the point—just as when scientists finally weighed in on the Great Dress
Debate, explaining how our eyes and brains process light and color differently,
and proclaiming that the dress was indeed blue and black, the issue remained
far from settled. More than two-thirds of an online poll insisted it was white
and gold. It seemed people preferred the magic of their original perceptions.
What if the person who originally posted the picture of the dress online
had simply said, “Look at this blue and black dress”? Having been told the
color of the dress—having been given the “answer”—most of us would prob-
ably never have given the matter a second thought. Similarly, our participants
would probably not have seen the god or the masks or whatever other image
vii
viii Preface
sprang to mind, because we would have conditioned their ability to see what
it was that we wanted them to see.
“Conditioned” is the key word here. We are all conditioned to see the world
through our own particular lens, which is influenced by our backgrounds,
characters, cultures and experiences (and as we now know, by how our eyes
and brains play tricks on us under certain light conditions). Is it any wonder,
then, that in our particular picture puzzle, a participant of Indian heritage
saw the Hindu god, the African participants saw the African mask and the
Mexican participants saw it as Mexican, though they were in disagreement
as to whether it was Aztec or Mayan? We all have certain mental models, or
frames, as well as preferred modes of behavior, that have a strong bearing on
how we interpret reality and how we act based on those interpretations.
Why does this matter? Think about this in terms of your business, where
the picture you are asked to look at on a daily basis is rather more serious
than a trivial dress. Maybe it’s looking at your publishing business and asking,
“What future do I see in newspapers, magazines or books?” Maybe it’s look-
ing at your digital venture and asking, “How do I monetize this?” Or maybe
it’s looking at both print and digital, and asking, “How do I make these two
platforms work together?”
Your answers to the questions that vex your media or entertainment busi-
ness will depend on your frame—a frame that needs to be broken if you are
to survive in times of such rapid change.
Frank Bennack, the veteran chief executive of the Hearst media empire, knows
this to be true. As he told us during a “fireside chat” in our New York center, 90
percent of his business today bears no resemblance to what it was when he started
as CEO in 1979. You need to be like a pilot, he said, who is mentally running
through the flight long before stepping into the cockpit. Proficient pilots visual-
ize the path they want the airplane to take. They don’t wait until they’re at the
desired altitude and then suddenly bank right. They’re constantly looking ahead,
thinking about where they need to go, compensating for whatever might break
the pattern—and in this way, they arrive at their destination.
To not do so is to end up like the music industry, which thought that
being like a pilot simply meant that you winged it. When digital arrived, the
industry stuck to its traditional frame—the sale of CDs and total control of
the value chain—and it did all it could to oppose anything that challenged its
way of seeing the world.
A decade later, listen to what Warner Music Group executive Michael Nash
had to say to those who are overly attached to their frames: “Get over it. Move
on. Understand where the world is going. Understand the core strength of
your company, and figure out how to harness that core strength in a new
context” [2].
Prefac e ix
This book is precisely about that: Understanding where the world is going,
understanding the core strength of your company and figuring out how to
harness that core strength in a new context.
This book is based on IESE’s AMP in Media & Entertainment, which IESE
Business School has been running in New York and Los Angeles since 2011.
The program combines contributions from leading professors and practitio-
ners, as well as real-life case studies, to establish a base upon which you can
start to build the set of managerial tools that you will need to manage fast-
changing media and entertainment businesses.
Mirroring that program, this book tells a story and takes the reader on a
journey of self-knowledge and self-discovery. There are numerous plot twists
and constant guessing games, as befits an industry going through unprec-
edented disruption. But by the end we hope that you will have learned some
important new lessons and gained deeper insights into how to apply general
management principles to the particular challenges you face.
The Editors
References
1. T. McCoy (February 27, 2015), “The Inside Story of the ‘White Dress, Blue Dress’
Drama that Divided a Planet,” The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.
com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/02/27/the-inside-story-of-the-white-dress-
blue-dress-drama-that-divided-a-nation/
2. L. Cabral (2011), “Interview with Michael Nash, Warner Music Group,” IESE
Insight magazine, Second Quarter, Issue 9.
Contents
1 The Big Picture: Four Trends That Change Everything 1
Mike Rosenberg and Philip H. Seager
2 Strategy: The Soul of Your Business 15
Mike Rosenberg, Adrian Caldart, with Philip H. Seager
3 “Show Me the Money!” Getting Inside the Bottom Line 37
Philip H. Seager as told by Hillel M. Maximon
4 Marketing in a New Media World 55
Julian Villanueva with Philip H. Seager
5 Decisive Leadership: Leaders That Create Extraordinary
Outcomes 81
Mike Rosenberg, Iris Firstenberg, with Philip H. Seager
6 Decision Analysis: The “Science” of Predicting
Your Next Hit 101
Miguel A. Ariño, Rafael de Santiago, with Philip H. Seager
7 Operations Management: Not Just What You Do,
But How You Do It 113
Philip Moscoso with Philip H. Seager
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xii Contents
8 Th e Digital Economy: It’s Not the Technology,
It’s the Business Model, Stupid! 135
Sandra Sieber with Philip H. Seager
9 M anaging Creative People: Time to Tear Up the Handbook? 159
Philip H. Seager
10 C orporate and Entrepreneurial Finance: Moving Your
Business from Back of the Envelope to Front of the Class 183
Ahmad Rahnema Alavi, Jan Simon, with Philip H. Seager
11 Scenario Planning: Your Playbook for the Future 205
Mike Rosenberg with Philip H. Seager
Index 215
