Versatile Amphibian

I've talked to several large US technology companies over the last couple of months about their product and go-to-market strategies in Europe. The common theme running through these discussions has been how to maximise the effectiveness of their regional operations. This is a complex question to answer as it covers all aspects of the business, from broad brush strategy down to staff incentivisation. It's also very possible that there's no best practice that applies to all companies in a sector. What struck me, however, is that there's a dearth of methodologies for establishing the correct strategy for subsidiary businesses. To that end, I've started developing such a methodology. The first component in my view is defining the dimensions that promote or restrict freedom of action for a subsidiary company. These aren't hugely different from the dimensions of any business at the macro level - I see them as freedom to act on: Brand and marketing strategy Portfolio s...

Jeff Zucker has been getting some press for saying NBCU are unlikely to go into Apple's scheme to rent popular TV shows for 99c an episode ( link ). Personally I think he's right to keep out of it. Why? I'm increasingly of the opinion that even premium TV is somewhat commoditised. How much would you pay for your favourite show? And how much for your 10th favourite or your 20th? Besides live, I think the answer would be pretty much the same for 1, 10, 20... And therein lies the issue. NBCU makes a lot of money selling its channels into the bouquet packages of cable networks. If it enables customers to buy a la carte then it risks the cable networks reducing the price they will pay for those bouquets. And that would be bad, because even if Apple TV really takes off and gets massive penetration in the home, replacing the lost bouquet, NBCU's revenues would become rather variable. A la carte is fine if you're guaranteed to have success after success, but it seems unlike...

Linda Jensen had some interesting things to say at IBC about HBO's strategy in Central Europe, which I thought were worth noting down. HBO's biggest CEE markets are Romania and Poland. Initially they just brought US content over into Europe, but now they’re making country specific versions of US formats e.g. In Deriva – a Romanian version of ‘In Treatment’. This corresponds to the strategy of many premium content producers – use great local content as a hook into imported fare An interesting characteristic of the business is that they have certain freedom to develop their own technology and product lines. They're launching HBO Go shortly – a broadband OTT product developed in-house, before the joint venture was bought out by HBO. This seems to fit with Linda's world view on content: “a subscribe once, use anywhere” model that is day and date independent and her view is that Europe is underdeveloped vs. US in online: eSell thru’: $580M US vs. $67M EU Online VOD: $100M US...