I originally had written about the Apple iPad in this post postulating its success because of the new behaviors it would enable.  Last week I crowd-sourced the following question on LinkedIn.

What are your best ideas on how the Apple iPad will value-disrupt the publishing and game industry?

Here are the three best answers I received.

Jeffrey Speiser

1. Publishers know that they can’t ignore Apple.  Book Shelf is going to take over the ebook market in the next few years the way itunes did. There’s a price war in the publishing industry already and this is just going to help Apple.  Consumers are already getting used to paying $9.99 for best selling hardcover books. Now they’ll be able to get them digitally for the same price.
2. Magazine subscriptions can now be distributed digitally. Same with comic books, trade journals, and newsletters. No costly printing, and users can easily archive all the issues they want without stacks of paper in their homes.  Unlike the Kindle or other readers the iPad is going to closely simulate the real world experience of reading a magazine, making it more accessible for older users, and cool enough for younger ones.
3. On the gaming front, users get instant access to the app store with thousands of games. They won’t be as graphic intense as a console unit, but that’s not the purpose of these games. Most of the best selling app games are more strategic in nature which is perfect for the iPad format.

Darren Yan

1. It’s my belief that the education sector will lead the adoption of the iPad as the preferred e-book tool, and it’ll be the students who will act as the brand ambassadors for the iPad who’ll take the product mainstream.  This strategy will disrupt the value chain for academic publishing businesses worldwide, with online libraries managed by companies such as Reed Elsevier uniquely placed to deliver an integrated research tool for students in universities.
2. Moving forward, traditional newspaper and magazine organizations should take advantage of this promising tool by turning all their published contents to be “click-able” and integrated across all major social networks that allow the content to move beyond the reader (i.e. iPad user) to the network, thereby allowing the same content to evolve into a viral distribution.   However, most newspaper and magazine companies have not invested adequately in their content management system that effectively integrates keywords to the Internet where complementary content can be incorporated in the content developed by the organization.  Moreover, the traditional editorial approach to content development in these organizations makes the adoption of an integrated news story difficult. Most editors and journalists take great pride in their work, and appending external links to add the social elements in the content could inadvertently be construed as their work being incomplete.

Hence, many challenges remain, and the degree of disruption to the value chain will take time.

George Hazapis

1. Apple is shaking up the digital book market like it did the music industry with the iPod & iTunes music store. The agency model is a departure from the way Amazon has been doing business with book publishers. With Kindle, Amazon sold digital versions cheaply to drive sales of its e-reader. Publishers make less on each e-book sale under the new model but are willing to accept a lower return for e-book sales because they can control the value of their product, that is, books and content. Consequently, the distribution and pricing models will be redrawn.
2. iPad seeems to revolutionize the digital media and may offer publishers a new way to present content and charge for it.  Apple has been able to control the price of music while boosting the sales of iPods without bringing the music industry much money.  Apple’s iphone gives content producers a platform on which to charge for their products/services. The iPad brings innovations to the market and appears to be a convergent electronic device as telecom firms, computer makers and consumer electronic firms are set to produce the same product.

In other iPad value-disruption  news

1. CBS plans to reduce prices to $1 on some iTunes TV episodes
2. Disney turning its attention on iPad for games, Marvel comics, TV
3. iPad Revolutionizes Online Continuing Education
4. Apple iPad to Have Big Impact on Online Poker

My take

As with all innovations, the greater the number, types, and breadth of new behaviors a disruptor (iPad) causes to emerge, the higher the probability that it will create new value.

New value in the form of new relationships between the user and:

• Self
• Space
• Friends
• Family
• Co-workers
• Communities
• Companies
• etc.

Now re-think iPad.  Imagine new relationships that individuals, groups, communities, content suppliers can build because of its capabilities.  Only then can you begin to see its trajectory.  And having seen how behaviour and relationships can so readily predict outcomes can you then begin to decode where we’ve come from:

• Language
• Fire
• Writing
• Printing Press
• Morse code
• Phone
• Internet
• Mobile phone
• Smartphone

and use that trajectory to predict where we’re going:

• iPad
• pure voice activation
• symbiotic measurement
• etc.

Value-disruption questions

1. What behavior can you see yourself now doing?
2. How would it impact your relationships?

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