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And thanks for listening. Welcome to the HBR Ideacast. I'm Scott Barranato. I'm joined today by

Jorge Kows, president of the Encyclopedia Britannica Company. It was one year ago that Jorge and his executive staff made the momentous decision to cease

publishing the printed set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, a 244-year-old product.

In the March issue of HPR, Jorge explains why this was not a difficult

decision and how the company had long since moved on from the printed reference business.

Jorge, thank you for joining us. Thank you very much, Scott.

So I want you to take me back to 1996 when you arrived at Encyclopedia Britannica.

I think many people will think this story starts with the Internet, but it doesn't.

What was happening in 1996?

So, you know, when I first came into the company was a completely different company, a

company that had been severely impacted by a new technology and back then the technology

was basically the C. D. R. R. On the online was beginning to be a presence in the

consumer space in the households you know it wasn't really

as prevalent as it is today obviously and it had been a company that

basically had seen itself plummeting from maybe a hundred and twenty thousand

printers that they had in 1990 to probably around 30,000 or 35,000

prints that is more or less a volume that it had in 1996.

So it was a company that didn't have enough time to change,

...