Digital technologies provide new ways for media companies to distribute information, engage the public, and assess results and outcomes. These products should also reflect an organization’s commitment to ethics and its responsibility to the audience. Those who manage digital products must possess a combination of communication skills and technology savvy, as well as demonstrate innovation, leadership, strategy, and creativity. This chapter explores the emerging role of product management as it specifically relates to journalism and media companies.

In this chapter, the concept of the business model is introduced. One concept of the business model in particular, the Business Model Canvas, is explored as a way to conceptualize and categorize elements of a business model.

What is funding? Why do you need it? Where should you seek it? Which types are best for you? This chapter will answer these and other questions you may have as you launch your media enterprise.

This chapter introduces entrepreneurship topics related to the business set-up phase, start-up phase, and growth phase. These phases are relevant for most start-ups other than those that follow the lean start-up approach in which the elements of the phases described in this chapter are blended together in a process that involves releasing and continually revising product or service prototypes in response to customer feedback.

This chapter introduces the building blocks for both innovation and successful entrepreneurship while describing how innovation and entrepreneurship are interrelated concepts. It continues with a discussion about competencies—and specifically core competencies—as necessary building blocks for both innovation and successful entrepreneurship. The elements of innovation are also discussed.

How do you come up with good ideas for a potentially viable product that will meet a real need and find a market? What makes a business idea worth pursuing?

This chapter focuses on a fundamental dilemma for entrepreneurs: How to identify your customer or market, or in this case, your readers, viewers or listeners. To develop a successful media company, entrepreneurs must know who the audience is and how to reach it. Making the exercise a bit more tricky today is that the customer for news and information is very different than in the past. Influenced by an ever-evolving media ecosystem, today’s audience or customers are not just in a single place. They hang out on social media, use smartphones or gaming devices, or even watch streamed programming on television, sometimes all at once. Understanding the new media ecosystem will help entrepreneurs to understand who they are trying to reach, the scope of their business venture, and how to best allocate financial and human resources.

By the end of this section, you will be able to: Distinguish between a marketing strategy, a marketing plan, and a pitch Describe the elements of a marketing plan

The business world is often equated to an ecosystem: the environment is comprised of interacting organizations and individuals much like the biological ecosystem (Moore, 1993). Entrepreneurship is no different, as it can be thought of as its own ecosystem, with new ventures being created, maturing, needing to adapt, or becoming extinct. Much like the biological ecosystem, in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, change occurs and gives rise to opportunity or presents challenges. It is important to consider the various levels of the ecosystem when evaluating the entrepreneurial environment. For example, the ecosystems can be analyzed at a macro level such as the terrestrial ecosystem in biology or the national economy in entrepreneurship. Additionally, ecosystems can be analyzed at more micro levels like the rain forest ecosystem in biology or the firm level in entrepreneurship.

This chapter will provide an overview of business models, revenue models, and business plans, and how they are developed, including the use of the business model canvas and other ideation tools. The chapter will discuss traditional media business models, some common forms of business models for content and technology plays, and some of the various legal and regulatory issues facing media startups and entrepreneurs. This chapter primarily focuses on for-profit businesses. The following chapter explores nonprofit business models more in-depth.

Since the internet stole the comfortable ebb and flow of the morning paper and the evening newscast, the news cycle has become less like a wave and more like a waterfall. Journalists and audiences are drowning in breaking, negative news.

The U.S. media industry has been experiencing major disruption. Learn how the media landscape is evolving and why an entrepreneurial mindset and intrapreneurial skills are in demand.

In this chapter, we explore international perspectives in entrepreneurship, how the startup “fever” captured the minds and souls of innovators across Europe and around the globe, and how leading cities are growing as startup and innovation ecosystems. While this section is titled entrepreneurship abroad, the preliminary chapter focuses on entrepreneurship in Europe. (This chapter will be expanded to other continents for Version 2.) We also look into how Silicon Valley has provided the prototype of scalable success and startup ecosystems which others in the world have tried either to differentiate from or emulate. This U.S. West Coast model built a world-leading innovation ecosystem attracting talent, funding, and resources. Media innovation and entrepreneurship initiatives and startups are presented in the context of the broader global focus on entrepreneurs leading both change and solutions to global and local challenges that impact twenty-first-century interconnected societies. Activities will help you to take the lead in implementing and learning more from your own experience and experimentation.

Securing needed financing is one of the most important functions related to starting a business. It is important, then, to understand what sources of financing exist at various stages of venture development. It is also important to determine what kinds of financing provide the most value for the entrepreneur and the new venture. Debt and equity financing decisions must be considered in relation to the cost of the financing and the amount of control that the owner is willing to sacrifice to get the needed resources.

This chapter describes the purposes of business planning, the general concepts related to business planning, and guidelines and a format for a comprehensive business plan.

By the end of this section, you will be able to: Explain the importance of sales strategy and provide an example Explain the importance of customer service

Recent developments in the U.S. media business have seen print continue its decline while digital media outlets continue to capture a greater share of the market for news media consumption and income.

You don’t have to create your own media outlet or technology company to be an entrepreneur in the journalism or communications space. You may want to sell your own services on a contractual basis to companies who need them. Being a freelancer means you are responsible for marketing your services, finding clients, providing your services to them, billing them, and reporting on your activities to tax and governing bodies. This chapter will talk more about the ups and downs of life as a freelance journalist or content producer, and how to navigate them.

There are many strategic considerations for entrepreneurs, including a few big strategic issues like determining their exit strategies, planning for succession, and embracing ideas like sustainable entrepreneurship.

This textbook is intended for use in introductory Entrepreneurship classes at the undergraduate level. Due to the wide range of audiences and course approaches, the book is designed to be as flexible as possible. Theoretical and practical aspects are presented in a balanced manner, and specific components such as the business plan are provided in multiple formats. Entrepreneurship aims to drive students toward active participation in entrepreneurial roles and exposes them to a wide range of companies and scenarios.

This chapter introduces a sample of perspectives and tools designed to help individuals recognize potential business opportunities. The concept of design thinking is also examined in some detail. The objective is to help you improve your ability to apply inspiration, ideation, and implementation as part of the design thinking process.

By the end of this section, you will be able to: Distinguish between traditional marketing and entrepreneurial marketing Describe the seven elements of the marketing mix

By the end of this section, you will be able to: Distinguish between primary and secondary market research Define a research goal and the importance of research design Understand how to choose a sample, and collect and analyze data Identify common sources for secondary market research Understand how to identify the target market within the total available market and serviceable available market

This chapter will explore revenue strategies that have worked for nonprofit news outlets in the digital age. It begins with an in-depth look at The Texas Tribune, which over the past decade has gained a reputation as a national model for nonprofit news. The chapter also explores best practices in revenue strategies as pursued in recent years by the Tribune and many of its peers in nonprofit news.

This is a modular open textbook designed for entrepreneurial journalism, media innovation, and related courses.

By the end of this section, you will be able to: Describe effective entrepreneurial marketing techniques (guerilla, relationship, expeditionary, real-time, viral, digital, word-of-mouth) Discuss the pros and cons of these marketing techniques

Resiliency—the ability to weather change and bounce back from failure—is an essential mindset for entrepreneurs. In innumerable blog posts and articles, industry leaders describe resilience as a cornerstone to innovation, frequently citing Thomas Edison’s famous quote: “I have not failed. I have just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.”

In this chapter several entrepreneurship topics are introduced, including: entrepreneurial ecosystems, intrapreneurship, social entrepreneurship, Indigenous entrepreneurship, community-based entrepreneurship, and family business. This overview of just a few of the branches of entrepreneurship thought and research is intended to provide the reader with an idea of the breadth of this field of study. There are many other categories of entrepreneurship, from women entrepreneurs to technology entrepreneurs, which provide interesting and important study topics.

This chapter provides you with an overview of entrepreneurship and of the language of entrepreneurship. The challenges associated with defining entrepreneur and entrepreneurship are explored, as is an overview of how entrepreneurship can be studied. The objective is to enable you to apply current concepts in entrepreneurship to the evaluation of entrepreneurs, their ventures, and the venturing environment. You will develop skills, including the capability to add value in the new venture sector of the economy. You will acquire and practice evaluation skills useful in consulting, advising, and making new venture decisions.

This chapter introduces the idea that there are different types of economies while providing examples of ways to consider how economies can differ. It also introduces the distinct levels of analyses that must be considered while stressing the importance of applying the appropriate tools to conduct the analyses at each level.

Want to get funding for your j-startup? You’ll need to learn how to pitch.

By the end of this section, you will be able to: Understand the importance of customer-focused branding Explain the steps in defining and developing a brand Describe the benefits of brand advocacy

Content marketing and social media marketing level the playing field for new ventures, allowing them to reach and engage users and customers organically, with minimal investment. This chapter will provide an overview of key concepts in content marketing, including how to develop a marketing strategy to move people through your conversion funnel and leverage content tactically to execute your plan. In addition, the chapter will give an overview of some of the metrics used to measure success of content and social marketing endeavors in terms of reach and engagement.

Only three media companies — Buzzfeed, Vice Media, and Vox Media — meet the definition of a “unicorn,” or a startup valued at more than $1 billion. The three have very different growth stories (see the chart below), but they all have attracted large, young and returning audiences – and major investors, both public and private. Publicly traded companies (whose capital comes from stock markets) often invest in proven startups with a goal of eventually integrating them (or one of their products) into the company. Disney, for example, intending to benefit from Vice’s cable TV launch, invested $400 million in the company in 2015. At about the same time, NBCUniversal, a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast, invested $400 million in Buzzfeed to facilitate a television partnership, and also invested $200 million in Vox.