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  • The Content Trap

  • A Strategist's Guide to Digital Change
  • Written by: Bharat Anand
  • Narrated by: Jason Culp
  • Length: 16 hrs and 4 mins
  • 5.0 out of 5 stars (10 ratings)

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The Content Trap

Written by: Bharat Anand
Narrated by: Jason Culp
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Publisher's Summary

“My favorite book of the year.” (Doug McMillon, CEO, Wal-Mart Stores) 

Harvard Business School professor of strategy Bharat Anand presents an incisive new approach to digital transformation that favors fostering connectivity over focusing exclusively on content. 

Named one of the best books of the year by Bloomberg

Companies everywhere face two major challenges today: getting noticed and getting paid. To confront these obstacles, Bharat Anand examines a range of businesses around the world, from The New York Times to The Economist, from Chinese Internet giant Tencent to Scandinavian digital trailblazer Schibsted, and from talent management to the future of education. Drawing on these stories and on the latest research in economics, strategy, and marketing, this refreshingly engaging book reveals important lessons, smashes celebrated myths, and reorients strategy. 

Success for flourishing companies comes not from making the best content but from recognizing how content enables customers' connectivity; it comes not from protecting the value of content at all costs but from unearthing related opportunities close by; and it comes not from mimicking competitors' best practices but from seeing choices as part of a connected whole. 

Digital change means that everyone today can reach and interact with others directly: We are all in the content business. But that comes with risks that Bharat Anand teaches us how to recognize and navigate. Filled with conversations with key players and in-depth dispatches from the front lines of digital change, The Content Trap is an essential new playbook for navigating the turbulent waters in which we find ourselves. 

“A masterful and thought-provoking book that has reshaped my understanding of content in the digital landscape.” (Ariel Emanuel, co-CEO, WME | IMG) 

The Content Trap is a book filled with stories of businesses, from music companies to magazine publishers, that missed connections and could never escape the narrow views that had brought them past success. But it is also filled with stories of those who made strategic choices to strengthen the links between content and returns in their new master plans.... The book is a call to clear thinking and reassessing why things are the way they are.” (The Wall Street Journal

Includes a PDF of Images, Charts, and Graphs

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2016 Bharat Anand (P)2016 Random House Audio

What the critics say

"As Bharat Anand shows in this eminently readable book, connections are now more important than content. His insights will bring you several steps closer to understanding the digital revolution and how you can avoid its many perils." (Daniel H. Pink, New York Times best-selling author of Drive and To Sell Is Human)

"A very smart book - creators, ignore this at your peril. This revolution has been twenty years in the making, and Bharat Anand makes the past (and the future) a lot more clear." (Seth Godin, New York Times best-selling author of Meatball Sundae and Linchpin)

"Bharat Anand has written the rarest of books, one that combines deep strategic insight with great practical impact. The Content Trap is both a delight to read and the essential book for understanding today's digital revolution. In the process, Anand debunks the conventional wisdom time and time again; his insights are sharp, perceptive, and strikingly original." (David Garvin, C. Roland Christensen professor of business administration, Harvard Business School)

What listeners say about The Content Trap

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great knowledge

the book gives me new perspective on businesses and how to develop my ideas further

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One of the best books I have ever read

not a quick read or listen but an absolutely incredible book. no book better breaks down what it really takes to succeed in a digital environment and better shows you the how many rational and logical decisions you are making are wrong and actually leading to your demise. stop what you are doing and start reading this book.

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Superb research and quality audiobook

I feel smart listening to this. But seriously, if you’re ahead of the curve in a lot of ways from other marketers following best practices if you read this book.

Love the PDF of all the graphs and data to refer to, and the informative headers (ie table of contents) in the chapter section of the audible app. Makes reviewing the material a lot easier, afterwards! Great job on this! 👍🏻

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Great book, well explained, but hard to finish

Great book, well explained, but hard to finish because of narration… Despite that, the book is full of ideas and examples… worth to deeply study and apply some parts.

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