Finke, Nikki
2010
Cameron Talks ‘Avatar’ Novel & Sequels: Probably Makes #2 And #3 Back-To-Back (16.09.2010)
James Cameron gives a quick phone interview about the planned AVATAR trilogy. He won’t do anything until the deal is a sure thing and then he’ll probably film number 2 and 3 back to back.
Sahlman, William A.
1997 (find 2008 version!)
How to Write a Great Business Plan
98
“Don’t misunderstand me: business plans should include some numbers. But those numbers should appear mainly in the form of a business model that shows the entrepreneurial team has thought through the key drivers of the venture’s success or failure.”
“The model should also address the break-even issue: At what level of sales does the business begin to make a profit? And even more important. When does cash flow turn positive? Without a doubt, these questions deserve a few pages in any business plan. Near the back.”
99
Sahlman’s “framework systematically assesses the four interdependent factors critical to every new venture:
100
“The assumption behind the framework is that great businesses have attributes that are easy to identify but hard to assemble. They have an experienced, energetic managerial team from the top to the bottom. The team’s members have skills and experiences directly relevant to the opportunity they are pursuing. Ideally, they will have worked successfully together in the past. The opportunity has an attractive, sustainable business model; it is possible to create a competitive edge and defend it. Many options exist for expanding the scale and scope of the business, and these options are unique to the enterprise and its team. Value can be extracted from the business in a number of ways either through a positive harvest event-a sale-or by scaling down or liquidating. The context is favorable with respect to both the regulatory and the macro- economic environments. Risk is understood, and the team has considered ways to mitigate the impact of difficult events.”
101
The People: “What do they know? Whom do they know? and How well are they known?”
Arthur Rock (Apple, Intel, Teledyne): “I invest in people, not ideas.” Rock also has said, “If you can find good people, if they’re wrong about the product, they’ll make a switch, so what good is it to under- stand the product that they’re talking about in the first place?”
“Fourteen “Personal” Questions Every Business Plan Should Answer” -> good list.
The opportunity: “Is the total market for the venture’s product or service large, rapidly growing, or both? Is the industry now, or can it become, structurally attractive?”
102
“Nine Questions About the Business Every Business Plan Should Answer” -> good list.
103
“Investors, of course, are looking for businesses in which management can buy low, sell high, collect early, and pay late. The business plan needs to spell out how close to that ideal the new venture is expected to come.”
104
Two graphs every business plan should have.
“The first picture depicts the amount of money needed to launch the new venture, time to positive cash flow, and the expected magnitude of the payoff.”
A reworked diagram by Eric Eikrem (10.08.2010), CC by-nc-sa:
“The second picture complements the first. It shows investors the range of possible returns and the likelihood of achieving them.”
A reworked diagram by Eric Eikrem (10.08.2010), CC by-nc-sa:
104f
The Context: “Opportunities exist in a context. At one level is the macroeconomic environment, including the level of economic activity, inflation, exchange rates, and interest rates. At another level are the wide range of government rules and regulations that affect the opportunity and how resources are marshaled to exploit it. Examples extend from tax policy to the rules about raising capital for a private or public company. And at yet another level are factors like technology that define the limits of what a business or its competitors can accomplish.”
105
Risk and Reward: “I’ve come to think of a good business plan as a snapshot of an event in the future. That’s quite a feat to begin with-taking a picture of the unknown. But the best business plans go beyond that; they are like movies of the future. They show the people, the opportunity, and the context from multiple angles. They offer a plausible, coherent story of what lies ahead. They unfold possibilities of action and reaction.”
“any business plan worth the time it takes to write or read needs to focus attention on the dynamic aspects of the entrepreneurial process.”
106
He provides a list of things you shouldn’t say.
“the plan must unflinchingly confront the risks ahead-in terms of people, opportunity, and context.”
“Those are hard questions for an entrepreneur to pose, especially when seeking capital. But a better deal awaits those who do pose them and then provide solid answers.”
107
“When professionals invest, they particularly like companies with a wide range of exit options.”
“Investors feel a lot better about risk if the venture’s endgame is discussed up front.”
107f
Don’t try to get the best conditions for yourself or regulate every possible aspect. Try to find an investor who is actually experienced and knows how to help.
Jackson, Peter
Court, David
2010
Review of the New Zealand Film Commission
NZ film pretty much didn’t exist before the commission was founded in 1978. Now it does.
They support the need for a commission. But with many changes.
Reiss, Jon
2010
Think Outside the Box Office: The Ultimate Guide to Film Distribution and Marketing for the Digital Era
Gives very PRACTICAL advice: specific numbers, costs, prices, positions, tasks, etc.
Mentions transmedia 3 times.
Quite radical from a filmmaker’s perspective. I specifically mean indies, who always seemed to see themselves as a smaller Hollywood -> Hollywood’s concepts / business models / etc. should also work for them. Which they never did. But now it’s becoming more clear that they don’t and perhaps never will.
Not radical enough from my perspective. It’s a filmmaker sharing his insights from his struggles within the film industry. It’s not a step back to reassess the big picture.
29-36
Define who your film is for (hopefully not for yourself) and how you will reach it.
37
“The new 50/50 is as follows:
50 percent of your time and resources should be devoted to creating the film. 50 percent of your time and resources should be devoted to getting the film out to its audience, aka distribution and marketing.”
45-52
A good “overview of rights, markets and windows”; how they have been and how he reconceptualises them.
53-59
Know what YOU want to achieve and think about how to get there.
61-72
He describes “the bare minimum” of team members you need, and some more recommendable positions if you have the money.
127-131
His “Introduction to Transmedia” is less than 5 (!) pages short.
128
“media consumers don’t consume in one unified pattern anymore.”
129f
Definition “extradiegetic”:
“This material is called “extra-diegetic” and includes all content that is not part of the final released film, especially material that is created but never intended to be part of the final released film. However, as our understanding of film expands, there will not need to be a separate classification between diegetic and extra-diegetic; it will all be part of a seamless whole.”
133-136
Chapter 13: Redefining the Theatrical Experience
His new Definition-theatrical:
“It is time for filmmakers to reclaim the meaning of a theatrical release so that it is inclusive of a multitude of live-screening event scenarios. The theatrical experience needs to be redefined as people watching “films” with other people. Any place. Any time. Any media.”
143
“Unfortunately, due to contract obligations, IFC is currently only set up to do VOD day-and-date with their Festival Direct Program.”
151
“[...] Chris Hyams (the head of B-Side) did the research and found that all films (studio and independent), on average, lose money from theatrical.”
171
“I believe that incorporating aspects of an event into your screenings is the future of independent live event/theatrical releases.” A bit of a nonsensical sentence, but it goes back to stressing experiences.
172-174
“Ways to create a sense of an event:
174f
“Transmedia Aspects to Screenings
175-177
Other options:
195
“The alternative theatrical grassroots screening model has shown the way to democratize and return a shared film experience to the control of individuals and groups,. With that newfound power, people will continue to find new ways to exhibit and congregate in order to watch films.”
243
“I think transmedia has tremendous potential for how narrative filmmakers can find new audiences and engage with them. Again, this is not just about marketing, it is about finding and engaging the audience for your film and your oeuvre.”
244
“Audiences don’t consume media as they once did. They have their own preferences, whether it is a movie theater, DVR, their iPhone, Xbox console, etc. Audiences have media and art form preferences. You can’t bend them, you must accommodate them.”
245
“Part of the death of DVDs has been due to people realizing that they didn’t need to watch a film more than once. Transmedia creates a life beyond the one viewing of a film.” -> Not sure about that. Isn’t transmedia even more ephemeral than a traditional movie?
275
“merchandise can be points of entry for films or narrative extensions – so they can be important to a transmedia strategy.”
289
“Television’s core business is repeat viewers.
It is difficult for television to command repeat viewers with individual films. When there was a plethora of fledgling channels such as HBO, Starz, Showtime, AMC, etc., they needed to buy movies to fill their schedules. But as those networks have matured, they have turned to series to bring back repeat viewers. Even indie stalwarts IFC and Sundance are buying fewer films in favor of series programming.”
296
“Ways to monetize your digital rights”:
299
“There is an argument I have heard on panels lately: Most filmmakers have a greater problem with anonymity than with piracy. I think this is a false argument.” If nobody wants to pay for it, perhaps nobody wants to see it, so perhaps the film is simply shit or doesn’t have an audience. -> Market it properly!
347
“Dentler observes that if you look at the history of consumer media, you always have different models for different types of publications. Some things are free, some things you pay for. He uses print media as an example, pointing out the difference between the Wall Street Journal and the Free Press.“
Paley, Nina
2009
DIY Days Philadelphia 2009
Gives details about her income from Sita Sings the Blues. She is convinced she’s making more money using Creative Commons than if she had restricted Copyright.
She paid USD50,000 for the music rights. And she has nearly recuperated these costs.
Dopfer, Kurt
Potts, Jason
2008
The General Theory of Economic Evolution
xii
“That is our general theory, namely that the analysis of rules is the explanatory basis of the nature and the causes of wealth in consequence of the coordination of rules, and that economic evolution in rules is the explanatory basis of how this wealth changes.”
xiii
“both behaviors and technologies co-evolve and mutually adapt to each other, a process that invariably results in both micro and macro structural change.”
Definition: “Our general theory of economic evolution is therefore intended as an integrated generic framework to define the rules of an economic system, how they are coordinated, and the causes and consequences of their change.”
xv
“Knowledge builds knowledge, and the consequence is economic evolution, both as an extent structure of knowledge and as a historical trajectory of knowledge.”
” We require micro analysis to study how individual carriers originate, adopt and retain novel rules, and to analyze the change in micro structure that results. We require meso analysis to study how populations of rules change and the transformations in industries, markets and institutions that result. We require macro analysis to study how meso units themselves are coordinated into a macro whole and the historical logic of growth and development as sequences of macro trajectories.”
1
Definition “economics”:
“evolutionary economics is best defined by what it is not – i.e. it is not a mechanistic analysis of economic coordination and change. It is not the study of the consequence of things already known, nor of their exogenous disturbance.”
2
Definition “economy”:
An economy can be defined “as a complex open system, or more specifically, as a non-linear, quasi-entropic, differentially replicative, partially stochastic, non-integral, non-computable, non-equilibrium, boundedly rational, learning focussed, behaviourally conditioned, self-organizational, strategically interactive, path-dependant, environmentally composed, institutionally structured, co-evolutionary, discovery-based, enterprise driven, technology and resource dependant, topologically complex adaptive ongoing process of variation, selection and replication in the growth of knowledge.”
3
“The complete axiomatics of evolutionary realism can be summarized as follows:
4
“Evolutionary reality is composed of populations [axiom 1] and structures [axiom 2] of idea-actualizations (i.e. process-structures) that change with time [axiom 3].”
“Economic evolution is therefore not ‘just a metaphor’ from biological evolution. Rather both economic and biological evolution, along with all other evolutionary subject domains, share common properties represented by the three axioms of evolutionary realism.
5
Definition “evolution”, “economic evolution”, “subject”, and “object”:
“Evolution is the process of the adoption and embodiment of ideas into new carriers and in economic evolution that carrier is primarily the human mind.”
Subjects are “processes that centre about the human mind”.
Objects are “processes that relate to the external environment of things”.
“Subjects are not objects because objects have no mind, and, therefore, play only a secondary role in the process of economic evolution.” Capital is way less important than humans/knowledge.
6
“The human mind is [...] the seat of economic evolution.”
8
“Economic evolution is the co-evolution of subject and object rules. [...] Economic evolution is therefore a complex generic process at the nexus of subjects and objects. This makes an obvious difference between, for example: (a) engineering, which is the pure study of technological rules; (b) sociology, which is the pure study of social rules; (c) ethology, anthropology or behavioural psychology, which is the study of behavioural rules; and (d) cognitive psychology or neuroscience, which is the study of cognitive rules. Economics is the study of subject and object rule co-evolution, and therefore involves (at least) all of these.”
9
10
11
“All rules have carriers in the same way that all existences are composed of an idea and a matter-energy actualization of that idea. Carriers and operations are the material reality of a rule.”
“Schumpeterian economists ever since [Schumpeter] have centred their analysis about trajectories, and in particular technological trajectories.” Very good references!
12
“a rule process in three distinct phases:
“A trajectory is the process by which a novel rule is originated, adopted and retained in a carrier population, such that it eventually becomes coordinated in the economic system resulting in a new economic order.”
“The population sum of micro trajectories for a single rule through time is a meso trajectory, and a meso trajectory is the basic dynamical unit (i.e. process) of economic evolution.”
13
“[Evolutionary economics] shares with biology the fundamental ontological premise that it is ideas (or rules in analytic language) that evolve. But in economic evolution, these rules are generic in that they are created by the human mind, and neither the product of genetics or any other exogenous factor. For this reason, evolutionary economists emphasise that the locus of the wealth of nations is the human mind and its propensity to originate, adopt and retain new ideas.”
‘Idea’ in analytic language: ‘rule’.
‘Actualization’ in analytic language: ‘carrier’.
14
“economic evolution is both a self-organizing and creative-destructive process of a novel rule trajectory.”
16
“The fundamental questions in economics are not, in this view, the problems of choice in markets or efficiency in firms, but rather the coordination of the whole economy and how this changes.”
“So although we maintain that evolutionary economics is ultimately for macro analysis, we allow that the definition of macro may be scalable to ‘macro units’ smaller than the whole economy.
We call this partial evolutionary economic analysis [...].”
21-24
Meso must be at the centre of evolutionary economics.
There is no direct relationship between micro and macro.
There is a relationship between micro and meso, and meso and macro. (see p26)
Therfore evolutionary economics needs a double methodology: methodological individualism for micro-meso, and methodological pluralism for meso-macro.
24
“Indeed, the global macroeconomy is quite possibly the most complex system in the known universe, and certainly at least as complex as the human brain or the global ecosystem. Yet although no neuroscientist would describe the mind as a simple neuron- to-behaviour aggregation, and no ecologist would describe the ecosystem as a simple gene-to-ecosystem aggregation, the current mainstream paradigm of economic analysis is analogously that, namely the supposition that micro operations sum to aggregate economy.”
25
“The reason these otherwise naturally meso concepts have remained static and exogenous − even when it is observationally unambiguous that markets change, that industries change, and that technologies change, and moreover that the most immediate and pressing economic problems that agents face is in dealing with such change − is that the aggregate logic of the micro-macro framework cannot have it otherwise. It is the theory not the reality that is wrong.”
“As every entrepreneur and World Bank economist knows, it is ultimately the analysis of the problems of change that reveal the qualities of a good framework. The micro meso macro framework is, we argue, geared precisely toward the analysis of such change.”
“Evolutionary micro analysis, then, is the study of individual rules, carriers or systems that compose a meso unit. And evolutionary macro analysis is the study of coordination and change in the structure of all meso units as a whole.”
26
There are two foci of evolutionary economics: “a micro–meso focus about agent carriers and rules; and a meso–macro focus about rule populations.”
29
Definition “Homo Sapiens Oeconomicus”:
“Homo Sapiens Oeconomicus is generic man. It differs from the classical notion of Homo Oeconomicus in the sense that it explicitly recognises the element of Homo Sapiens, namely the ‘wise man’, and not just as a tool-making and tool- using animal, but as a rule-making and rule-using animal that experiences generic change. Homo Sapiens is capable of knowledge, and Homo Oeconomicus is capable of economic operations. Homo Sapiens Oeconomicus is capable of new knowledge for new operations and, therefore, is the carrier of economic evolution.”
30
“The uniqueness of Homo Sapiens Oeconomicus lies in these higher order abilities as manifest in the creation of 2nd order rules for changing and developing 1st order rules. The creation and transmission of these “generic rules” is the basis of what we call culture, a point that resonates across the social sciences, but it is also the foundation of economic analysis from the evolutionary perspective.”
31
“We now effortlessly live in cold climates, hunt fish, and fly at night, and that has nothing to do with biological evolution of the human organism, but rather is a consequence of economic evolution in our ability to originate, adopt and retain knowledge. Economic man is a generic animal.”
“The ideology of evolutionary economics, then, is neither the perfectibility of man or society imbued in the concepts of “rational man” or “socialist man”, but closer to the spirit of “renaissance” man with respect to the optimistic prospects of new knowledge and to the goodness and naturalness of both an open society and an open mind.”
Definition “agency”:
“The generic ability to use and adopt knowledge is not limited to agents however, but also extends to firms, organizations, households, networks, and other socially organized systems of agents, which we shall call agencies.”
32
“Technical change moves the economy, but so too does change in the rules that organize people. Evolution in social rules, including agencies, is also essential to economic evolution.” Sandberg was talking about the same when he said that technology changes faster than the consumers’ understanding of them.
33
“Agencies organize agents into structures of knowledge that otherwise do not exist through
any aggregation of those agents, but rather through the emergence of specific connections that yield generic value.”
36
“Economic evolution originates in a micro trajectory, as the process by which a micro unit acquires a new generic rule and thus changes its knowledge base.”
37
“In most cases, what is originated, adopted and retained is not a rule but a rule complex of subject and object rules.”
Definition “micro trajectory”:
“We define this process by which a micro unit becomes generically different as a three-phase structure – origination, adoption, retention – over two types of carriers – agents and agencies – in terms of three orders of rules – 0th, 1st, 2nd – and over four types of rules – CBST. This generic micro 3×2×3×4 space is analytically appropriate, we suggest, for the representation of any rule in any micro unit at any point in space and time in order to provide a useful micro foundation for meso and macro analysis of economic evolution.”
38
Definition “global/local generic novelty”:
“Global generic novelty is the first carrier of a novel generic rule. Local novelty is the first carrier of that in each new environment.”
41
“Learning is adaptation to a world, whereas adoption is a generically marginal process that changes the world. Learning is a process of adaptation, but adoption is a marginal process of differentiation and progress. Learning stabilizes known advances, but adoption drives them. Adoption, not learning, is therefore the core mechanism of microeconomic evolution via generic change in micro units.”
42
“Rule adoption into an agent or agency is also conditional upon the ability of the carrier to cope with the uncertainty of the event, to manage the process of change and to finance the resource cost involved.”
“To adopt a new rule is to become generically different. And generic difference is the driver of economic evolution.”
47
There are four aspects of creative destruction:
49
“Meso 2 therefore begins with high uncertainty, but toward the end of the adoption process the cumulative effect of experience and experiment will have greatly reduced that uncertainty and knowledge of the rule will settle into understandings.”
Meso 2 / competitive enterprise “is a competitive process in the literal sense of a race in which no one knows who wins until the end, although with the twist that there is no end to the race, only participant or player exit. Meso 2 is the exhilarating phase of market capitalism at its best and at its worst, both creative and destructive and ordered and chaotic all at once, creating new solutions for some, and new problems for others. This is the normal run of generic competition and the cutting edge of economic evolution as ideas are tried and tested. Competitive enterprise is competition to innovate and therefore the powerhouse of economic evolution.”
50
“By meso 3, the rule has formed into an institution, such that the carrier population replicates and the structures it requires are maintained.”
“By meso 3, uncertainty has been transformed into risk and generic profits have been extracted. The size of the market is revealed and good strategies have been learnt. Prices will become stochastic as the information conveyed by them is fully expropriated.11 Stable patterns of activity will predominate and transactions costs will fall as risk premiums vanish and efficiencies of scale and scope are produced. Maintenance and service niches will open up, and expertise will be well-defined. Expectations about the rule will converge, and any environmental, cultural or political implications will become pronounced. The rule will become embedded in material artefacts and human behaviours. Cognitive and behavioural rules will normalize into habits and routines, and social and technical rules will become dominant and standard. Meso 3, as such, will begin to look a lot like the world that neoclassical economics describes. Yet the difference is that this world is explained in generic analysis whereas in neoclassical analysis it is simply assumed.”
55
“The meso unit in a market can be usefully further characterized by its generic scale and velocity. Some ideas are bigger than others, and some ideas happen faster than others.”
56
“while technical rules may be fast and easy to adopt, new behavioural rules may take much longer, effectively slowing the entire process. A novel generic rule is adopted at the velocity of its slowest component, and so the complexity of a rule over the rule taxonomy will matter.”
59
“Entrepreneurship is most valuable in meso 1 and 2, but management is most valuable in meso 3.”
“Venture finance drives meso 1 and 2, but standard savings and investment drive meso 3.”
63
“Finance is an evolutionary enterprise that can only exist in the context of novel generic rules, and therefore in the face of uncertainty. Savings and investment are both generic and operational notions; but finance is a purely generic property, such that it has no role outside of an evolving economy and, in turn, no meso trajectory can happen without finance of some kind or other.”
67
68
“At the deep level, macro 1 involves the de-coordination of the extant logic of rule associations due to the new rule upsetting existing structures of what was known to be feasible, true or reasonable. The conventional response is at first to deny or attack it, then to adapt to it through awkward adjustments of position, then finally to assert that that was what was believed all along.” That’s what Hollywood has always been doing, see VHS and the Boston Strangler for example.
69
“Macro 2 changes things: it changes what people think and do, and also the systems they form.”
70
“The state of macro 3 is the state of macro order, a process that is both ever-embedding knowledge and ever-regenerating those rules so as to retain and maintain the coordination of the once-novel generic rule within a new macro order. By macro 3, the meso rule is embedded into the macro order at all levels and it is at this stage that the broader implications of the rule play out.”
76
“Phase 3 of a cluster is the ongoing retention and stabilisation of the operations of the cluster. The two extreme states of this are, first, that the entire cluster will be absorbed into a very large firm in order to internalise all the connections between the constituent rules and hence to more efficiently control or exploit them. And second, that the entire cluster may become controlled by government through regulation, planning, sponsorship, or direct ownership. This may then further be tied to policies relating to regional development, innovation, education, infrastructure and trade. Actual outcomes will invariably fall somewhere between these states, with some mix of private and public provision of connections.”
77
“We defined a macro trajectory as the effect of a meso trajectory on the system of all other rules. This was then analytically represented as a three phase process of decoordination, recoordination and ongoing macro coordination of both the deep generic order and the surface generic equilibrium. We examined the ways in which coordination failure can occur at each of these phases as a failure of rules or populations to connect. And we then further developed this to consider the co-evolution of systems of meso rules explicitly in terms of emergent clusters of meso units and trajectories. Overall, we sought to unpack the complexity of generic coordination in an open evolving economic system in consequence of a meso-macro trajectory.
We have argued in this chapter that economic evolution is a process of change and recoordination. A meso trajectory is the driving process of change, but a macro trajectory is the process of decoordination and recoordination that results. This process consists of a reconfiguration of the associations between rules (deep structure) and of the populations of carriers (surface structure).”
78
“The coordination of economic systems is a consequence of human cooperation and the imagination that sustains it. But the evolution of economic systems is a consequence of human imagination and the cooperation that sustains it. The macroeconomy can, therefore, only be understood as a co-evolutionary process.”
80
“Regime: Rule + Carrier population + Trajectory”
85
“Our theory of rules is as follows:
85f
“So far, then, we have built up a theory of economic evolution that begins with a novel idea in a single agent that then develops into a theory of the meso unit as the rule is adopted and retained by a population of carriers. Such a meso trajectory disturbs (i.e. decoordinates) the macro order and engenders a process of recoordination that over a macro trajectory results in a new macro order. This process occurs in parallel, as multiple meso trajectories unfold at once, and in series, as one meso trajectory leads to the next. These meso-macro processes are defined respectfully as the coevolution of many meso and the process of regime transitions from one trajectory to the next. And that, in abstract, is our theory of economic evolution.”
86
“The statement that there is currently no general theory of coordination will surely annoy just about everyone [...].”
93
“Homo Sapiens Oeconomicus does not just inhabit an environment and then adapt to it, as did Robinson Crusoe, but actively seeks to change that environment in order to
explore both its generic capabilities and its generic potential. Economic man has knowledge. But it is not the case that he will never be satisfied with that knowledge, but rather that he never can be, because other agents will create new ideas and those will, eventually, compete with everything he has. The solution therefore is to continually develop new knowledge.
The study of economic evolution is the study of this process, which we think can be analysed as a micro meso macro process.”
“economic systems evolve when a new idea creates a new environment that opens a path to create further new ideas.” (summary about Hayek)
94
“all policy is intervention into the economic order to promote welfare.”
95
“We may therefore distinguish three levels of generic policy as based about the three orders of rules: 0th order constitutional rules; 1st order operational rules; and 2nd order mechanism rules (see 1.4.2 above). Policy that seeks to effect coordination and change in constitutional rules is 0th order generic policy. Policy that seeks to effect coordination and change in operational rules is 1st order generic policy. And policy that seeks to effect coordination and change in mechanism rules is 2nd order generic policy.”
98
“Difference is the elemental driver of economic evolution, and societies that are tolerant of different ideas and rules carried by micro agents possess a necessary condition for economic evolution.”
99
“Open societies drive economic evolution through the creation of space for novelty and the possibility of micro units becoming generically different. Freedom is not therefore just a moral, civic or political quality, but also a fundamental economic quality in the possibility of opening the future to new generic potential. The value of freedom is the possibility of novelty, and the power of novel generic ideas is that they are what endogenous growth theorists call ‘nonrival’, i.e. they can be adopted and used by other agents without operational cost to their originator. But generic ideas are operationally costly to originate, adopt and retain. New knowledge is neither free nor given, but requires generic investment in rules resulting in the de-coordination and re-coordination of the economic order, an ongoing and natural evolutionary process that Schumpeter called ‘creative destruction’, but which we have defined and given further analytical precision with the concept of a ‘meso trajectory’.”
“It is the possibility of novelty that is the origin of all wealth, and it is the market system – along with other institutional mechanisms of generic freedom, including rules for origination, adoption and retention – that constitutes the process of ongoing generic construction. This is the basis of all freedom, the origin of all wealth, and the central unit of evolutionary economic analysis.“
Wilson, Fred
My Favorite Business Model (17.02.2010)
He asked for suggestions for a name for a business model that has existed for a long time, but hadn’t been named. In the comments one Jarid Lukin suggested “Freemium” and it stuck.
Chris Anderson popularised the term in Free (2009)?
“Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc, then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base.”
“I would like to have a name for this business model. We’ve got words like subscription, ad supported, license, and ASP, that are well understood. Do we have a word for this business model? If so, I don’t know it.”
Pratten, Robert
18.12.2009
Moving Filmmakers to a Transmedia Business Model
Not bad article, but still film-centred: the ultimate aim is to make a film.
4 interesting graphics.
“Remember that it’s not all for free! Free is your loss-leader to generate the money. Even if it’s “real content” you might still effectively look at it as a marketing cost – it can help to position it in this way to investors. And note that what’s free and what’s paid will be in flux – maybe changing over time and from media to media.”
“Indies that follow this transmedia model will be offering an evolving service rather than a one-off product and that means audiences become customers that need to be listened to, responded to, cared for and managed”
“If you perfect this evolving transmedia ecosystem you may ask yourself if you still want to make a feature after all.” Good point, but he might not believe it himself.
“Don’t expect anyone to delve deeply into your storyworld looking for brilliance. You have to provide “satellite media” that orbits the core: it’s easy to digest and looks cool or fun. Celebrity cast or crew and genre are going to get attention and convey credibility – just as they always have.”
“To summarize then, filmmakers will move to transmedia storytelling because it’s going to be the way you build audiences.” His final point, and it’s wrong! Transmedia won’t be there to sell a film, but to sell the transmedia. And film can be part of it.
Moving Filmmakers to a Transmedia Business Model (05.01.2010)
Bruns, Axel
Reconfiguring Television for a Networked, Produsage Context
Available in print at QUT KG library.
Scroll down to “THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT OF THIS ARTICLE!!!”
“”salience determines whether an audience will gather around and share media, not production values. In the time before hyperdistribution, audiences had a severely limited pool of choices, all of them professionally produced; now the gates have come down, and audiences are free to make their own choices.” (Pesce, “Hypercasting”, n.pag.)”
“”media people often criticize the content on the Internet for being unedited, because everywhere one looks, there is low quality”: he points out that “what they fail to understand is that the Internet is strongly edited, but the editorial judgment is applied at the edges, not the center, and it is applied after the fact, not in advance“”
“By industry standards, the production values for much of the content shared through such systems may be low, but the entertainment value – or more generally, the salience – of such content for its viewers is evidently high enough to attract large numbers of users; in the process, we can observe the emergence of new content genres from machinima to mash-up, as well as the revitalisation of older forms (such as the short film) in new contexts. This is a process of format innovation, of creative prototyping, which is likely to have impacts on audiovisual formats well beyond present online video hotspots.”
“the technologies and processes of television – once constituting an effective and powerful network for widespread content distribution – have now been outclassed by the Internet, to the point that in the absence of significant innovation on part of television operators, many users themselves have begun to do the industry’s work of shifting content from one network to the other”
“”Buy a chunk of radio spectrum, or a satellite transponder, or a cable provider: none of it gives you any inherent advantage in reaching the audience. Ten years ago, they were a lock; today, they’re only an opportunity.” (Pesce, “Nothing Special”, n.pag.)”
“users [...] have “come to understand that the sharing of media is an act of production in itself”
“users who are increasingly embracing the produsage and sharing of their own media content, and of hybrid content mash-ups incorporating a wide variety of sources: such users can no longer be wooed effectively and consistently even with the higher production values which the industrial model of audiovisual content production may be able to provide, if the same model also entails their return to a relatively passive position as viewers and audiences; instead, they must be embraced through new models which allow for their participation, their creative contribution, even their leadership in content production and distribution.”
“how, then, may the television industry reconfigure itself to participate in this information and entertainment space, while remaining financially sustainable?”
“Three related strategies are now becoming visible”
“the field of television (or more broadly, audiovisual content distribution) beyond broadcasting is today in considerable flux, with new technological, corporate, operational, and content models emerging with great frequency.” Creative destruction!
IP Networks as the New Backbone
“a gradual replacement of other networking infrastructures with IP-based networks”
Harnessing Video- and Filesharing
“”The age of hyperdistribution demands the development of new economic models which can harness piracy, for profit” (“Piracy”, n.pag.)”
“outsourcing of part of the distribution effort to audiences – a process of what has been called “crowdsourcing”"
“”today the broadcaster aggregates audiences, aggregates advertisers, puts commercials into the program breaks, and makes a lot of money doing this. But … wouldn’t it be economically more efficient for the advertiser to work directly with the program’s producer to distribute television programming directly to the audience, using hyperdistribution?”"
“The answer to this question would require a cost-benefit analysis of conventional and new models which takes into account factors such as
“”Why has YouTube become the redistributor of these clips? Because none of the copyright holders made an effort to distribute these clips themselves.“”
“”the fundamental paradox of hyperdistribution” is that “the more something is shared, the more valuable it becomes.“”
“the gradual erosion of existing boundaries between professional and amateur content [...] may allow for the emergence of new content genres to wider recognition, as well as for the discovery of new on- and off-camera talent, and could therefore also be seen as a pathway into the industry proper, similar to (but offering a significantly wider intake than) short film competitions and other events.”
“If direct download and filesharing models can be shown to be financially sustainable, then, this may ultimately even lead to a bifurcation of the television industry into live broadcasting (which may well find increasing commonalities with industries staging sports, musical, and theatrical events) and drama production (which is necessarily closely aligned with the movie industry), with these two components gradually drifting apart as the medium which once held them together, broadcast and cable television, declines in importance. Simultaneously, we may see the emergence of new direct-to-download drama production houses, and direct-to-streaming live channels, which can no longer meaningfully be said to belong to the same overall industry.” THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT OF THIS ARTICLE!!!
Harnessing Users as Produsers
“the core problem emerging from this discussion is that many new genres for audiovisual content in an Internet-based, produsage-driven environment have yet to be invented and identified”
“we may well see a similar shift from compilation and collective hosting to syndication and aggregation. In this model, video content would be widely dispersed across the network, and its availability would be highlighted through frequently updated RSS-style content feeds” -> www.koldcast.tv
“The television industry in Australia and elsewhere (and in particular in those nations where fast and cheap broadband access is readily available) is now approaching a tipping point [...]. Beyond that point lies a substantial structural transformation of the industry, and an opportunity for new business models and content formats to emerge.”
“significant potential for fundamental changes to conventional broadcasting models“
Montgomery, Lucy
Keane, Michael
Chapter 8 in Thomas, PN et al ~ Intellectual Property Rights and Communications in Asia
130
“Copyright reform represents a point of convergence between political, social, cultural and economic forces.” see also p147
136
“A failure to recognise economic potential makes it more difficult to manage cultural activities so as to promote capacity building and value creation.” Like the film industry today: they don’t see how to make money without copyright, so they don’t develop ideas how to make money without copyright.
“In short, the political and ideological context in which China’s filmmakers must operate is preventing copyright from playing a larger role in the film industry’s value chain.”
137
“Copyright continues to be separated from the core problems of filmmaking in the minds of many Chinese directors.”
137f
“‘the biggest problem is not piracy but the system of censorship, and the second is that there is not a film market.’”
139
“[...] many studios do in fact choose to sell master copies to pirate distributors. [...] in order to recoup some money from the practice.”
147
“Copyright represents the convergence of several highly sensitive areas: media, law, economics, politics and ideology.”
“However, as the film industry demonstrates, copyright currently plays a relatively minor role in commercial decisions made by film producers. Censorship and distribution irregularities prevent copyright from functioning more prominently within the industry’s business model. Entrenched ditribution monopolies, outdated modes of rights trading and payment and failure to enforce existing laws are all undermining copyright’s role. Pervasive piracy means that distribution on DVD is barely worth considering as a revenue stream.”
Examined strategies for survival without IP: