Nettavisen: Competitive Advantages Over Legacy News Publishers And New Media Players In Norway

Main Competitive Advantages Nettavisen holds over Legacy News Publishers and New Media Players in the Norwegian Market

A Norway based online start up of news, Nettavisen had experienced an increase after the significant financial crisis in the year of 2009. They were able to increment the market shares and profits by utilization of few highly disruptive organizational models and also enabling relatively lesser employee to outcompete the power house legacy publishing organizations as well as new media-players like Google and Facebook.

1. Main Competitive Advantages Nettavisen holds over Legacy News Publishers and New Media Players  like Facebook and Google in the Norwegian Market

Nettavisen was competing against the larger obligatory publishing firms within a rapidly developing market for the publication of online news. They are able to increment the market share and profitability by using highly disruptive business models, which enable them to outcompete the power house legacy publishing companies (Weill and Aral 2006). During the earlier days of this online survey, the older news organizations felt that the brands were extremely highly established and hence they can try-out with the newer digital platforms at own speed. Nettavisen was able to put them wrong by establishing the most notable online news website in only few years. This type of early success eventually differentiated them from competition.

In 1996, the organization was completely an online start-up and by 2008, the business models were changed for this company (Barney & Hesterly 2012). In the year of 2014, it was announced that Nettavisen has been moving towards DDBM, in which the user buying patterns are extremely vital. It was acquired by several significant organizations of Sweden and Germany until in 2008, it was separated from TV2. After being separated from TV2, Nettavisen again became purely an online newspaper service.

The major competitive advantages that Nettavisen holds over the legacy news publishers and new media players like Facebook and Google within the respective Norwegian market are as follows:

1. i) Product and Service Differentiation: The first and the foremost competitive advantage that Nettavisen holds over others is the product and service differentiation (Jonsson and Mattsson 2013). The legacy news publishers like TV2 and Spray or media platforms like Google and Facebook were responsible for both online and broadcast oriented activities. Due to these different activities, often they were unable to donate their time completely within any one segment. However, Nettavisen always had the objective to participate directly with the various online news websites that are being created by larger broadcasters and newspapers (Weiss and Taskar 2013). Thus they only focused on online newspaper services and hence becoming one of the most popular and significant online news website in the entire Norwegian market.
2. ii) Clear Strategic Intent: The next significant and important competitive advantage that Nettavisen has is a clear strategic intent. They have included this particular strategic intent in their current business model (Zonta, Glisic and Adriaenssens 2014). This is mainly because they are free from the concerns regarding cannibalising the existing businesses and then focusing on drawing maximum customers to their website. This is majorly for the impact of digital media as it is highly dynamic that the front runners confront during a constant requirement of exploration (Myatt and Wallace 2015). This is different from the legacy news publishers and news media platforms as they have to balance the online exploration with the requirement of protecting their respective printed newspaper.

iii) Freedom of Publishing News: This is yet another important and noteworthy competitive advantage that Nettavisen has over others. They can publish those news what has happened, however the newspaper publishers have to think about what news should be kept for their printed products of next day (Meise et al. 2014). As per the manager of Nettavisen, they only have one agenda of sharing correct news on time and they are utilizing the Internet as a medium or an electronic paper. Due to this particular competitive advantage, it is possible for them to manage the news and share them with their clients easily and effectively.

1. iv)  No Need of Protecting Journalistic Legacy: Being an online news channel, Nettavisen do not have to protect their journalistic legacy under any circumstance. In the year of 2013, they made a proper strategic move, which must yield a faster turnover of their writer with the acquisition of a Norwegian blogging community of blogg.no and thus adding to the existing portfolio of websites of Nettavisen (Shea et al. 2014). The legacy newspaper publishers always have the responsibility to protect their journalistic legacy so that more customers are being drawn to their newspaper. However, this particular online news website, Nettavisen does not have this responsibility. 

Combination of Major Concepts and Principles of RBV or Resource Based View of the Firm and IT Portfolio Theory for Assessment and Explanation of its Competitive Advantages in a Disruptive Turbulent Market

1. v)  Movement towards DDBM: The movement towards a data driven business model is the next significant and vital competitive advantage that Nettavisen has in comparison to other legacy newspaper publishers and news media platforms like Facebook and Google (Ui and Yoshizawa 2015). They are pursuing big data strategies after analysis of huge amount of user’s web browsing data, purchasing habits, blogging data and social media for driving the editorial decision makers and improving advertiser and users’ experiences. Nettavisen has considered big data analytical approach for this purpose.

2. Combination of Major Concepts and Principles of RBV or Resource Based View of the Firm and IT Portfolio Theory for Assessment and Explanation of its Competitive Advantages in a Disruptive Turbulent Market

Resource based view or RBV can be referred to as the managerial framework that is being utilized for determining the strategic resources with the core potential of delivering comparative advantages to the firm. These resources could even be exploited by the respective firm for achieving sustainable competitive advantages (Stair and Reynolds 2013). This RBV focuses on the managerial attention over the internal resources of the firm with an effort to recognize the asset, capability and competency with the significant potential of delivering greater competitive advantages. Nettavisen in the Norwegian market has some of the core and significant competitive advantages over others. Since, the entire Norwegian market of news publishers is in an extremely turbulent and they have been acquired by two significant organizations of Spray and TV2 and finally in 2008, it was separated from TV2. This did not create an issue for Nettavisen rather they obtained major competitive advantages (Rainer et al. 2013). The RBV of Nettavisen included three distinctive tasks, which are as follows:

1. i) Identification of the Potential Key Resources: The first and the most significant step is to identify the key resources of Nettavisen. The major resources of this organization included their writers, data and computer systems. Being an online news website, they do not require several resources in their firm.
2. ii) Evaluation when these Resources follow VRIN criteria: VRIN criteria refers to valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable and finally non substitutable (Myatt and Wallace 2015). The resources of Nettavisen are extremely valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable and non-substitutable and they fulfil this criteria.

iii) Developing, Nurturing and Protecting Resources: The final step is developing and protecting these resources or assets. With the new business model of DDBM, they are able to protect their resources effectively.

Hence, Nettavisen is able to implement the value creating strategy even in the turbulent Norwegian market. The concepts of IT portfolio theory can also be involved for properly assessing and explaining the competitive advantages of Nettavisen within a disruptive turbulent market. The information system has been helpful to them for maintaining innovation and creativity. This information system is being utilized by an organization for helping the individuals to interact in support of business processes (Stair and Reynolds 2013). The various operations of information like collection, processing, storing and even distribution is possible with the help of this system. Information system is also helpful for providing several competitive advantages to the organization and hence eradicating the major issues and complexities faced here. Moreover, the availability of information and cost effectiveness are the next significant advantages that Nettavisen has obtained.

Value of information ca be referred to the amount that any decision maker eventually considers and have the willing to pay for information before making the respective decision. It is extremely for any organization since it helps in generation of business value and thus helping the firm’s overall competitiveness with the help of information technology. This value of information is completely related to the significant value of decision making after being supported by the organizational information (Petter, DeLone and McLean 2013). The IT portfolio manager of this organization manage the portfolio of their regular news and even plan for the latest updates. The principles of IT portfolio theory that has allowed Nettavisen to obtain their competitive advantages are as follows:

1. i) Alignment of Strategies.
2. ii) Alignment of Governance.

iii) Managing Data Confidently:

1. iv) Leading Actively.
2. v) Embracing the Risk over Legacy News Publishers and News Media Platforms.
3. vi) Being Transparent to the Readers.

Conclusion

Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that information system is extremely and significant for understanding as well as generating the value of business within the organization. Moreover, overall performances are increased for each and every department of the business. The above report has clearly outlined the detailed description on the case study of Nettavisen and its gaining of competitive advantages by combining RBV and IT portfolio theories. 

References

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Stair, R. and Reynolds, G., 2013. Principles of information systems. Cengage Learning.

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Weill, P. and Aral, S., 2006. Generating premium returns on your IT investments. MIT Sloan Management Review, 47(2), p.39.

Weiss, D.J. and Taskar, B., 2013. Learning adaptive value of information for structured prediction. In Advances in neural information processing systems (pp. 953-961).

Zonta, D., Glisic, B. and Adriaenssens, S., 2014. Value of information: impact of monitoring on decision?making. Structural Control and Health Monitoring, 21(7), pp.1043-1056.