Media managers are grappling with a broad range of intensifying challenges in markets that are characterised more by uncertainties than stability. Among the most pressing are complex interactions that are essential for achieving innovation because that depends on collaboration in various configurations that include: partnership, alliance, co-investment, co-production, interaction, participation, outsourcing, and commissioning. Such relationships are in some ways and under certain conditions co-operative, and at other times in other ways competitive – thus, coopetitive in nature.
The entrepreneurial character of media work and development is a focus of keen attention and growing emphasis due to economic contraction in legacy media and the experimental nature of online development. Yesteryear’s comparatively simple business models are no longer as profitable for many firms and competition is increasingly complex, complicated, intense and evolving. Media policy is contested at the intersection between markets and civil societies, mass media and networked communications, linear and non-linear platforms, economic development and political democracy, culture and commerce, consumer preferences and corporate priorities. The dualities are equally debated as strategic issues among media managers working to make good decisions in the midst of so much uncertainty in a highly pressurised environment.
The 2016 emma Conference focused on developmental dynamics and the complexity of interactions that characterise coopetitive relationships between media industries, firms, makers, managers, consumers and contexts (local, regional, national, international) in media systems that are in transition to a still uncertain but significant future ecology. As always, the conference prioritised contributions in research and thinking that addressed the roles and implications of media management in theory and for practice. Topics debated at the conference included:
- Managing risk under conditions of uncertainty
- Innovation and business models
- Collaboration, partnership and network economies
- Media hubs, creative clusters and networks
- Media funding, ventures capital and crowdfunding
- Entrepreneurship in media and journalism
- Media regulation and public policies
- Management training and business education
- Management competencies and development
- Local, regional, national, international and global media business
- Media strategies and corporate governance
- Social responsibility, ethical and reputation in media products
- Iberoamerican media markets dynamics (in Portuguese and Spanish language).