What should you charge for a virtual conference?

From time to time, every industry must adapt to some inconvenient technological advance. Suddenly, some part of what you offer can be reproduced or distributed in a new form. The temptation is to ignore the issue and hope it goes away. But if you don’t act, eventually some competitor, existing or new, surely will.

Reinvention is a painful process. Hollywood’s reaction to the advent of television followed the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. The same emotions played out in the response of the music industry to the arrival of digital downloads and streaming.

In retrospect, some of this looks absurd. Businesses often overestimate the extent to which a new channel of distribution will cannibalise their existing offering. VHS video, assumed to be the death of cinema, revived interest in feature films; more print books are sold now than when the Kindle was introduced.