The Potential of Technology

Technology reveals potential, yet business models capable of sustaining an entire sector cannot be built on potential alone. They must be grounded in consumer choices shaped by contexts that have proven highly fluid. Five cardinal axes define the process of convergence: what content, at what moment, in which place, in what format, and at what cost. Managing these variables is no longer a matter of understanding convergence conceptually, but of integrating into a new market that merges communication, work, and entertainment, positioning actors at the core of the social networks formed by users. Profitability in content production within this convergent environment depends on economies of scale—now global in scope—and on economies of scope, understood as the simultaneous production of digital content designed for four primary exploitation windows: television, video games, the internet, and mobile devices.

The new commercialization strategy for digital content breaks with the temporal sequencing traditionally associated with each exploitation window. There is no longer a hierarchy among media platforms, but rather differentiated and complementary market segments. Users move across platforms according to multiple factors, including time. The appeal of this market lies in the combinatorial logic of a single intellectual property: a television series can generate a video game, evolve into an advergame, and later be reformatted as a mobisode. Convergence has expanded distribution networks and access points, yet it has also eliminated captive audiences typical of the broadcasting era. Distributors and aggregators have become key strategists, not because of exclusivity or scarcity, but due to their ability to understand global niche markets and select the most suitable format for exploitation.

The evident risk during this transitional phase is that traditional media may lose the prominence they once enjoyed, while new corporations—often from outside the media sector—assume leadership thanks to their flexibility in responding to increasingly active audiences. The old slogan associated with Marshall McLuhan, “Bye Bye Gutenberg,” aptly describes the end of the mass media era, particularly the dominance of television. The period in which a single broadcaster addressed a passive audience has given way to a landscape composed of countless demanding nodes, fully aware of the growing value of their attention. That transformation defines convergence today.