WEEK 01
General Introduction
Overview: Digital technologies and the use of internet protocols are changing the ways in which the media and publishing organizations relate to their customers. Technology convergence is driving these changes and the media and publishing industry should take note.
What is technological convergence?
According to David Lei (2000)
Technological convergence occurs when advances or innovations commercialized in one industry begin significantly to influence or change the nature of product development, competition, and value-creating processes in other industries. By promoting the creation of higher value-added substitute or complementary products that redefine an industry's structure, convergence may lead to competitive conditions in which one industry's products or services are increasingly linked, absorbed, or blended with another industry's expanded range of offerings. In turn, convergence leads to the steady erosion of once-distinct boundaries among industries as they begin to share more similar competitive, market-based, and technological characteristics.
Technological convergence describes the phenomena of different media (1) such as telephony, data and other media, such as video, being carried via a single common electronic network. Prior to the digital era, distribution of these different types of media occurred through the use of separate and often tangible transport channels. Digital technologies enable these previously separate communication systems to now be run on common communications platforms often using the Internet Protocol.
The impact of technological convergence: the example of typesetting
Whilst there is evidence all around of different examples of technological convergence, little focused attention has been given to understanding the disruptive impacts that technological convergence can have on the structure of different industries. For example, typesetters used to play an important role in the print industry by being the custodians of important typographical functions. But with the impact of digital technologies, this role has been made redundant with the introduction of desktop publishing services where authors create directly into pre-established templates. How many old typesetters are now vital contributors to the desktop publishing sector? Only a very small number.
Desktop publishing functions are now also being disrupted
Current desktop publishing systems are now also being transformed into something new by the gradual adoption of the extensible markup language XML. XML was designed primarily to support automated computer-to-computer exchange of digital data between different information systems. But this early ambition is being extended thereby allowing content marked up using XML to be automatically presented to multiple different format outputs including web publishing, print and mobile devices, including mobile telephones. The impact of technological convergence therefore is giving the user of content the ability to access information in a variety of different formats. The impact this will have on the desktop publishing sector is still not clear, except that desktop publishing is currently in a transformation phase of fundamental proportions.
Technological convergence is an issue that needs to be embraced head on
Technological convergence is enabling businesses to relate to their customers in completely new ways. This is both a challenge and a threat for all organisations. The challenge is that organisations, through the use of digital technologies, will be able to access deep insights into the behaviours of their customers. The threat is that without embracing new service paradigms both large and small organisations may over a period of time become increasingly irrelevant as converging innovators find new ways to delight their customers.
Traditional “exchange mechanisms” with customers are changing
With the advent of technological convergence, the traditional customer retail selling process is being superseded by much more complex pre-sales exchange mechanisms between organisations and their customers. For example, organisations can communicate with their customers using a range of different channels including print; viewing, reading and interacting with screen content; and even through the use of audio content. The sum totem of these new types of exchange mechanisms is that organisations need to relate to their customers in ways that are inclusive of involving them as users, viewers and creators of digital content.
The structure of whole industries are being transformed by the forces of convergence
The re-configuration of business models around the notion of the customer as a user, viewer and creator will continue to radically transform the media and publishing industries. There is evidence that a number of different skills that once used to be provided by stand alone industry sectors (like commercial printing and commercial publishing) are being accessed and combined in new ways. For example, in-house print volumes have been rising and more and more enterprises are engaging in quite new enterprise publishing models on an in-house basis.
1)
Media and publishing industries includes all the sub-sectors associated with such communications including print, in-house print, graphic design, enterprise and other types of publishing, (including education), finishing and binding, print logistics, pre-press, content management, the equipment vendor sector and all related sectors where graphic communication services are embedded within the structure of those sectors.