MIB (15/06/2011): THE INTERSECTION OF INNOVATION & TRADITIONAL MEDIA

In this case I will switch into English, at least for the first part of the session, as we had the pleasure to receive a master class from Kamal Berwhani, Chief Digital Officer (CDO) at PRISA Group, who came to talk about The Intersection of Innovation & Traditional Media.

He is, up to date, the only CDO known in Spain and defines his role as transforming a company from traditional to digital. Simple definition but a lot of work and a great challenge behind (today around 99% of profit comes from paper in PRISA and 1% from Digital).

This position implies assuming and facing some risks related to people, processes, policies, cash, time,… If the transformation comes too fast the company will lose money and will die and if it comes too slow, the company will die as well; so it is crucial to find the balance in the way.

In order to meet the on-line monetizing opportunity, media companies must bridge the multi-device distribution gap with increasingly heavy focus on wireless internet devices and application development.

Traditional media is in most of the cases behind because people don’t see the business model in digital and because the indicators of value in digital media were largely ignored.

We analyzed local to global vs. global to local, limited supply vs. limited demand, and quality content vs. social content.

The most important and least understood assets and liabilities are not on the balance sheet. It is a question of changing people’s mind into digital and, at the end, “transforming CEO into CDO” but taking into account every single individual within the company to get them onboard and involved so we will achieve small changes that will end in a big transformation.

Today it is important to understand how to separate creation and distribution. Distribution is a commodity with lower risk and lower return.

And to reinvent traditional media (audience – companies – content) by adding new thing around those three pillars like: mobility, co-registration, couponing, e-commerce, Web, video/audio, user generated content, on-line communities… The key is to integrate platforms (use the off-line assets to complement the on-line and viceversa). From an idea to the execution and to production.

Así dimos paso a la segunda parte de la sesión con Juan Santamaría, Chief Financial Officer en Investing PROFit Wisely (IPW), con quien tuvimos un interesante debate en torno al Venture Capital.

En este sentido, nos habló de las diferentes etapas que caracterizan el punto en el que se encuentra el negocio (si es un start-up, un negocio maduro,…), lo que determinará el perfil de inversor y, a su vez, la valoración del negocio.

Los Venture Capital a la hora de decidir si entrar o no en un negocio, persiguen comprar a un determinado precio teniendo claro de antemano un mecanismo de salida mediante el cual obtenga un mayor precio.

El Venture Capital busca entrar ahora y salir en un horizonte que va de uno a dos años cuando el negocio está empezando, y de tres a cuatro años en negocios más maduros; obteniendo una plusvalía interesante. Desde la entrada ya están analizando la salida.

Lo normal es que en el horizonte de salida se doble la inversión inicial y que la salida sea vendiendo el 100% de las participaciones.

En todos los casos, se dan diversidad de pactos y cláusulas entre inversor y empresa participada con la finalidad de salvaguardar los intereses de cada una de las partes.

El Jueves hay tutoría así es que… buen fin de semana.