Makes me think of the value of media brands and not the value of the print medium they are delivered on. In the consumer goods arena, companies can license a name with almost no knowledge of the fact to an end consumer. Can publishers begin the process of licensing brands to lend credibility to new arenas? The NY Times front page, available in your home town? Probably a better produced front page than what is made today. Not possible? With digital editing and delivery, it sure is. In fact, news sources could aggregate and charge for the brands and content additions that you want, like cable. My Netvibes feed does this to a degree, but the delivery is still Yahoo homepage 2004.

Why pay, when it is all free? Because no industry survives on free and most stubbornly find a way to get back to normal profits over time. If the telecom industry can do it, anyone can.

While at a conference a few years ago, I was introduced to the idea of “over-innovating”. While competition forces incremental improvements, a line gets crossed between improving for the user’s sake, and beating out the most recent introduction. Over time, these advancements cost more than they’re worth allowing disrupting players to come in with new business models and value propositions, typically based on completely different feature sets) pushing the leader out (=Honda/Toyota’s hybrid/efficiency v. GM/Ford’s SUV’s).