Digital Strategy course has been invaluable and helped me develop critical and strategic thinking related to all things digital. The course covered a number of interesting concepts that I had never been exposed to and thoroughly enjoyed. The case studies and readings were extremely informative, relevant and interesting. Some of my key takeaways from the course are as follows: 1. Importance of Data Driven Business Models and Analytics One of the highlights of the course was the role of analytics and big data and its tremendous impact on business. Using Analytics as a differentiating factor and by collecting data using sophisticated technology, a company can differentiate from its competitors that have similar products. Harrah’s used sophisticated …show more content…
I realized that if innovations are not protected, investors’ ability will be limited in capturing value, which will reduce the overall optimal investment that these inventions would require. If the law lets a competitor to innovate around an existing innovation, it would greatly deter new creations and reduces the incentive to innovate. Patents and Copyrights limit the price discrimination practice due to imposed retail conditions such as “first sale” and “exhaustion” doctrines. The copyright law adds cost to subsequent innovators if their creations are derivative works of a previous innovation. The innovator on whose work, a new innovation is built has rights for most derivative works. Without a patent or copyright, it would almost be impossible for a small business to find investors and bring an idea to the market before its large competitor. I have also understood that there is a fine line between fair use and copyright and it is not always clear” as highlighted by a number of high profile lawsuits that included Aereo, Apple and Samsung, which we discussed in …show more content…
Long tail keywords in search have a tremendous impact in search engine optimization. As the words are more specific and not generic, not only can they be purchased at a lower cost but also generate better click through rates in spite of higher ad spend/cost. The music industry has been most affected by long tail. Long tail focuses on “ millions of markets of dozens” as mentioned by Prof. Yannis. Long tail lowers the cost of digital production, the Internet lowers consumption cost and search drives users to niches driving demand. Musicians, content producers, writers have all made use of long tail to target a niche segment of audience. They have used social media as a platform to showcase their talent and reach out to an audience enabling them to achieve neat profits due to reduced costs in creating, distributing, marketing and producing niche music. I had also learnt about an opposing view of long tail, which is ‘winners take all’ market. I do believe that in the future a number of businesses would resort to long tail to target a specific market or expand to a new market of high economic value and leverage the long tail benefits to differentiate their product from its