Michel Gensollen

The Impact of a Radical Innovation on Business Models: Incremental Adjustments or Big Bang?

In this paper we study the impact of a radical technological innovation on business models. Do firms react by adjusting their business models incrementally, through iterative steps? Or do such innovations lead, instead, to a big bang of new innovative business models that are all adopted and experimented with by the industry? To answer these questions, we analyze the impact of digitization—a radical innovation—on business models in the recorded music industry. Using an economic analysis of the effects of digitization, we begin by building five potential digital business models for the music industry. Then, using data from a survey on a sample of French record companies, we map these record labels on our digital business models. Our analysis suggests that digitization has led to a big bang of business models in the music industry, rather than to incremental adjustments of the existing business model.

“Selling less of more?” The impact of digitization on record companies

In this paper we use data from a survey of 151 French record companies to test the “long tail theory” at the level of the firm. More specifically, we test whether, following the “selling less of more” principle coined by Anderson (2006), record companies that have adapted to digitization (at various levels: artists’ scouting, distribution and promotion) release more new albums without having higher overall sales. We construct a production function in which the output is produced from conventional inputs of labor and capital, as well as inputs that are more specific to the recorded music industry. We consider two types of output: a commercial output (albums sales) and a creative output (number of new albums released). We show that labels that have adapted to digitization are more efficient in respect of creative output, but that there is no effect of adaptation to digitization on the commercial output, which is consistent with the predictions of the long tail theory.

L'ouverture des réseaux: planification ou concurrence dans les télécommunications et d'autres services publics

The present progress in the information processing technology is having a drastic impact on the telecommunications industry and on many public networks by creating a separation between two components: on the one hand, the network made up of the infrastructures; on the other hand, the command networks which monitor the former and use it as a support for the provision of differentiated services. Whereas the network of infrastructures is a natural monopoly which should however be disciplined through the threat of potential competition, the command networks are likely to be offereed in a competitive market; the latter should nevertheless be organized, if not planned, due to externalities such as security and interoperability.

A functional analysis of the network: A prerequisite for deregulating the telecommunications industry

Due to the obvious inefficiency of regulatory authorities, the introduction of potential competition in the markets of natural monopolies has recently been emphasized in theoretical publications. In spite of its limitations the framework of contestable markets has been the analytical background of decisions in various industries. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the application of these theories to the telecommunications network as a whole. Econometric models have failed to establish that the telecommunications cost function is subadditive, mainly because networks are heterogeneous from an economic point of view: information is transmitted with increasing returns to scale, while there are growing economies of scope between the data processing industry and the handling, by digital switching equipment, of the calls’ content and of the signalling and addressing information. To allow for this current technical evolution the deregulation process should dissociate the transmission network, which is a natural monopoly, and the traffic routing networks, which could be gradually opened to a limited competition. In this new structure there would be a wholesale market in which a regulated monopoly would rent transmission facilities (leased circuits, dedicated access loops, …) and a competitive retail market in which operators would sell traffic and value added networks to residence and business customers.RésuméEn raison du manque évident d’efficacité des procédures de réglementation et de contrôle des monopoles, les publications d’économie théorique ont récemment mis l’accent sur la notion de concurrence potentielle. Le concept de marché contestable, en dépit de ses insuffisances, a constitué le cadre d’analyse sous-tendant les décisions de déréglementation prises dans de nombreux secteurs. Le présent article se propose de discuter l’application de ces réflexions aux réseaux de télécommunications. L’analyse économétrique n’est pas réellement parvenue à établir que, dans ce secteur, la fonction de coût est sous-additive, en particulier parce que les réseaux sont hétérogènes au plan économique: la transmission de l’information connaît des économies d’échelle fortes tandis que les économies d’envergure deviennent de plus en plus nettes entre l’informatique et les fonctions de commutation, d’acheminement et de signalisation. Le processus de déréglementation doit tenir compte de cette évolution technique et distinguer, d’une part le réseau de transmission qui forme un monopole naturel et, d’autre part, les réseaux d’acheminement qui pourraient être ouverts progressivement à une concurrence limitée. Dans ce nouveau contexte, sur le marché amont de la transmission, un monopole réglementé louerait des équipements de transmission (liaisons spécialisées), tandis que la vente du trafic et du traitement de l’information pourrait se faire sur un marché concurrentiel qui permettrait le développement rapide des réseaux spécialisés d’entreprise et des réseaux à valeur ajoutée.

Réseaux de télécommunications et aménagement de l'espace

Abstract. — This paper tries to point out what the notion of telephone network brings to the understanding of facts linked with development of telecom services. It put the stress on the present judiciousness of a distinction between network-infrastructure and network-contacts, offered by a technical network more complicated and largely interconnected. The diversity of contact services and an attempt of typologies of them are explained. The paper studies then the spatial effects of telecom, impressed through the quality of services and by the actual fixed prices. Equipment disparities have doubtless played a role in the past, but the disparities of telephone fixed prices have still a present influence. Other structure effects appear with the emergence of new services. Will they work in favour of a centralization or a decentralization of economy, decision power, social relations ? They allow a reduction of spatial barriers, that asks the planners many questions.

l’analyse du fonctionnement interactif à l’évaluation du marché des téléconférences

AnalyseCet article a pour objet l’analyse comparative du fonctionnement interactif d’un groupe en réunion, sous diverses situations de médiatisation. La recherche présentée repose sur l’analyse d’enregistrements de réunions réelles, en face à face, audioconférence et visio-conférence. L’interactivité est d’abord définie comme la possibilité d’interruptions propres à favoriser le processus de communication. On analyse ensuite les mécanismes de régulation de l’interactivité, et on en étudie les fonctions dans le déroulement des échanges et la construction des discours. L’hypothèse est proposée, qu’en parallèle avec l’échange des informations liées au contenu de la réunion, a lieu, comme sur un canal sémaphore, l’échange de signaux de gestion, essentiellement infraverbaux et non verbaux, dont le rôle est en particulier de gérer: l’allocation des tours de parole, la compréhension mutuelle des participants, la mise en récit linéaire du discours émis sur le canal principal, la construction du savoir partagé utile à la tâche, la reconnaissance des statuts de parole, la production de discours ambigus et inopposables… L’étude doit permettre d’identifier les perturbations apportées à la régulation de l’interactivité lorsque changent les conditions techniques de médiatisation, et donc d’améliorer la mise au point des protocoles de saisie des informations avant transmission, dans les systèmes de téléconférence.AbstractThe authors are concerned with the comparative analysis of interactive processes in a meeting, subject to various situations of mediation. The research is based on the analysis of records of actual meetings, either in face to face situations, or in audio or video-conferences. Interactivity is first defined as the ability to interrupt in order to help the communication process. The mechanisms which regulate this interactivity are then analyzed, as well as its functions in the way exchanges proceed and speech is built. The thesis is put forward that parallel to the exchange of informations linked to the contents of the meeting, an exchange of control signals, chiefly of an infra and non verbal kind, takes place as on a signalling channel, the role of which is to regulate: the allocation of speech turn-taking, the mutual understanding of participants, the setting out of the speech issued on the main channel, the construction of the common knowledge useful to the achievement of the task, the regulation of speech status, the production of ambiguous and unopposable speeches… The study enables identification of the disturbances brought to the regulation of interactivity when the technical conditions of mediation do change, and allows improvement of the designing of the protocoles aimed at selecting voice and image data before their transmission through teleconferencing systems.