I’ve thought about what a vice president of content for Kobo might be and considered the strategic direction Kobo has taken recently and how this VP might fill the opportunities these moves have created. This attempt to “read” the corporate thinking of Kobo and judge my own fitness to play a leading role in this future, have led me to consider the question from a more personal point of view.
What are the responsibilities and goals of Kobo’s VP of content?
What does this person do to achieve these goals?
Answer: I could be this person. I have the experience, energy, and ability to take these responsibilities and achieve these goals—in short, I would succeed.
Filling this roll and achieving success is obviously your first priority, but perhaps I can propose an idea that would help you the VP of content and Kobo achieve even greater success.
My assumptions: Kobo is a content vendor filling the roll formerly filled exclusively by bookstores and the likes of Borders. I’m certainly not the first to mention the irony of Kobo’s current market position relative to Barnes & Noble (Amazon representing a distinctly different sort of colossus).
Obviously, Kobo has done well competing in this environment and appears to be doing many things right. At the same time, there is no business as usual and the status quo is one of innovate or die. What can Kobo offer beyond better service, greater convenience, and a more engaging experience. If you’ll excuse my shameless borrowing from Steve Jobs, what can Kobo do to change the world?
My goal is to change the publishing world, and I believe that with Kobo, we can implement some remarkably fundamental improvements on the tired old models of print publishing. I’ll refer to this change-the-world idea as Kobo ePublishing.
There are three key elements in this Kobo ePublishing proposal. Changing technology, changing markets, and changing ethics (you’ll see that this last idealistic-seeming part is a necessary element for achieving a successfully scalable implementation).
- Changing Technology: This is the obvious one. Less obvious is how to put all that’s new to constructive use. It’s simple, you just have to be smarter than everyone else! Alas, being smarter is not so simple.
Kobo ePublishing starts out with an immediate advantage over existing publishers: no baggage. I have cringed as publishers attempt to apply new technology to old publishing models. This is okay for incremental changes, such as the recording industry’s change from LPs to cassettes to CDs, but
What ideas can I contribute that will help Kobo offer more to its customers, continue to define itself in unique ways, and create opportunities for growth that fit with Kobo’s goals?
What combination of skills, knowledge, and abilities have I got that will allow me to realize these ideas within the larger context of Kobo?
What do I need to implement such plans, and…
why will this be a good thing for Kobo?
