This is an excerpt from our free-to-download report, Specialist Media Innovators in Europe
Specialist media businesses are thriving by serving consumer and professional communities around topics of interest. It is a bustling, agile sector with creator-led, consumer and B2B media.
We interviewed six leaders from our featured companies to dig into their strategy, uncover best practices and learn about their future plans.
Video recordings of all interviews are available, and here are the highlights from the series.
#1: Creating a global expert community that powers events
#2: Karger
Karger publishes about 100 academic journals in healthcare, and has been expanding its services for academics, healthcare professionals, pharma companies over recent years as the move to open access for scholarly publishing continues.
Daniel Ebneter, CEO, bases his strategy on the “cycle of knowledge” as academics develop new research, then communicate to clinicians and patients.
Karger has developed a suite of online courses, including the Campus series for early career academics which provides advice on how to submit articles for publication, and communicate research in progress to a wider audience. Available in multiple languages, courses have been popular among early career academics, strengthening their relationship with Karger and building more of a peer community.
Karger has also established innovation awards for medical start-ups, providing mentoring for businesses, and developing relationships with investors. As well as expanding to another part of the medical research ecosystem, this has helped inspire Karger staff to become more innovative, essential in a rapidly changing environment.
A few years ago, Karger acquired a publisher of medical handbooks, interpreting medical research for healthcare professionals, later evolving into content for patients. Last year, they acquired a medical communications business, adding skills in creating digital content, animations, audio. This can be used to support pharma businesses communicating to clinicians, or academics pitching research ideas to funders.
For the next few years, Karger is focussed on developing its portfolio of courses, communications and awards, to strengthen relationships with all in the research ecosystem. Meanwhile, they are investigating how AI can be used in academic publishing, how open access is changing the business model, and how upcoming generations of academics and healthcare professionals want to consume scientific content.
“Today we are in the business of scientific storytelling, upstream and downstream from the scholarly article.”
Daniel Ebneter, CEO, Karger
Specialist media, be that creator-, consumer, or B2B-led, is a proven resilient segment of media. What’s more, they continue to innovate as they look for new and better ways to serve their special interest communities.
All on the shortlist answered an email questionnaire and six were interviewed on zoom. We have included a short profile of each business in this report. Here we have the full interview recordings with top innovators included in our Mx3 Leadership report on innovation and trends in specialist media in Europe.
To watch in-depth interviews with six specialist media leaders, click below to view the recordings.
Click here to watch the interviews
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In the report, the best of Europe’s specialist media innovators share their experiences and strategies for growing revenues, including best practices, revenue sources, and investment priorities.
The “Specialist Media Innovators in Europe” report is free and available to download here.