Students evaluate textbook tech

Whether it’s by laptop, cellphone, or e-reader, digital text is here to stay. With constant improvements in digital technology, bookworms can now choose from an increasingly expansive library of texts with just the push of a button. So where does the anytime, anywhere ease of digital text leave the publishing industry? As the technology continues to evolve, publishers are scrambling to keep up. That is why a team of business students at Suffolk University is currently working towards a strategy to help the industry regain some ground.

As part of the senior capstone course at Suffolk University’s Sawyer Business School, students are currently analyzing how digital technology is impacting the textbook-publishing industry. The students have divided into teams representing different stakeholders in the textbook-publishing arena. Each team will devise a strategy to keep their particular business group afloat against the inevitable tides of change.

As the organizer of the course, lecturer Mitchell Weisberg sees this transition from print to digital as an all too familiar aspect of business in any industry. “For centuries we have seen technologies change industry, from the steam engine to Napster,” said Weisberg. “These disruptions challenge existing strategies and create opportunities for established and emerging businesses to pursue new strategies.”

The teams will be approaching the problem from the following perspectives:
• Publisher: with the traditional printed and bound textbook
• Sony: with the digital Sony Reader Touch
• Amazon: with the Kindle DX electronic reader
• CourseSmart: with access to textbooks online and ability to download and print them in part or in their entirety
• Wildcard or Entrepreneurs: students analyze possibilities that have not yet been realized

In tackling a real-life business challenge, the undergraduate students will draw on all their accumulated knowledge of marketing, accounting, management, finance, personnel and production to create solutions for the industry’s problems. Weisberg believes the project is just as important to the students learning about business, as it is to the actual publishers. “I’m trying to engage students in real-time, dynamic-strategy issues,” said Weisberg. “This is, essentially, a research consulting project about technology disruptions in the publishing industry.”

Having had extensive experience consulting with firms on technology-driven business process improvement, Weisberg has offered class feedback to the firms whose materials or devices are involved in the research project. The class currently uses a wiki page to discuss their findings for each particular field of the industry. The site is open for all users, so feel free to share your own ideas or catch a glimpse of what strategies are leading the pack thus far.

See “Tech versus text: the fate of the textbook” and “E-readers obsolete?” for more information on the impact of digital text.