Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Faculty & Research
  • Faculty
  • Research
  • Featured Topics
  • Academic Units
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • Faculty & Research→
Publications
Publications
  • May 2017
  • Article
  • Strategic Management Journal

The Reference Wars: Encyclopædia Britannica's Decline and Encarta's Emergence

By: Shane Greenstein
  • Format:Print
ShareBar

Abstract

The experience of Encyclopædia Britannica provides the canonical example of the decline of an established firm at the outset of the digital age. Competition from Microsoft’s Encarta in 1993 led to sharp declines in the sales of books, which led to the distressed sale of the firm in 1996. This essay offers new source material about the actions at both Encarta and Britannica, and it offers a novel interpretation of events. Britannica’s management did not misperceive the opportunities and threats, and Britannica did not lack technical prowess. This narrative stresses that Britannica’s management faced organizational diseconomies of scope between supporting lines of business in the old and new markets, which generated internal conflicts. These conflicts hindered the commercialization of new technology and hastened its decline.

Keywords

Digital; Britannica; Diseconomies; Encyclopedias; Applications and Software; Books; Competition; Publishing Industry

Citation

Greenstein, Shane. "The Reference Wars: Encyclopædia Britannica's Decline and Encarta's Emergence." Strategic Management Journal 38, no. 5 (May 2017): 995–1017.
  • Find it at Harvard

About The Author

Shane M. Greenstein

Technology and Operations Management
→More Publications

More from the Author

    • May 2022
    • Faculty Research

    AWS and Amazon SageMaker (C): The Commercialization of Machine Learning Services

    By: Karim R. Lakhani, Shane Greenstein and Kerry Herman
    • May 2022
    • Faculty Research

    AWS and Amazon SageMaker (B): The Commercialization of Machine Learning Services

    By: Karim R. Lakhani, Shane Greenstein and Kerry Herman
    • May 2022
    • Faculty Research

    AWS and Amazon SageMaker (A): The Commercialization of Machine Learning Services

    By: Karim R. Lakhani, Shane Greenstein and Kerry Herman
More from the Author
  • AWS and Amazon SageMaker (C): The Commercialization of Machine Learning Services By: Karim R. Lakhani, Shane Greenstein and Kerry Herman
  • AWS and Amazon SageMaker (B): The Commercialization of Machine Learning Services By: Karim R. Lakhani, Shane Greenstein and Kerry Herman
  • AWS and Amazon SageMaker (A): The Commercialization of Machine Learning Services By: Karim R. Lakhani, Shane Greenstein and Kerry Herman
ǁ
Campus Map
Harvard Business School
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
→Map & Directions
→More Contact Information
  • Make a Gift
  • Site Map
  • Jobs
  • Harvard University
  • Trademarks
  • Policies
  • Accessibility
  • Digital Accessibility
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College