paidContent.org highlights a study by PwC (PDF) with responses from 40 startup technology companies in Europe. It's not a very well-designed study for the most part but on page 3 of the report there's an interesting stat worth contemplating. When asked "Which types of companies face the most compelling opportunities from digital convergence over the next five years?" (multiple answers allowed) only 6 percent of the tech innovator companies in Europe surveyed answered that content developers for business information faced the most compelling opportunities from digital convergence - versus 46 percent for consumer content developers. Only non-consumer hardware companies scored lower for compelling opportunities (sorry, tractor manufacturers, your time will come). This is not necessarily the state of the true opportunities for digital convergence overall in B2B publishing in Europe, but it does represent what entrepreneurs are willing to do in this space - and the picture is not rosy.

Some of this may come from the level of innovation that B2B publishers finance themselves, but in general it's an indication that the best and brightest minds in content technology development are not being drawn to B2B content companies in Europe by a very wide margin. With the benefits from consumer technologies that work their way into B2B content products as a matter of course this may not necessarily be a cause for concern: oftentimes consumer technologies are perfected through the use of millions of people before they're unleashed on businesses for more specialized uses. But at the end of the day the PwC study suggests that the cleverest and most aggressive folks are not being thrown against the problems that are most likely to result in more productive and profitable uses of business information. This is an equation that is not going to favor business content producers in the long run. It means that more and more business information users are going to be attracted to technologies developed first for consumers and with increasing likelihood used by professionals via the open Web with less unique value-add provided by B2B publishers.

While I can't say that this study as a whole yields much useful information this particular statistic should serve as a starting point for further research. What will it take to provide levels of innovation that will drive forward profits for B2B content companies? It's worth noting, after all, that there is a rough correlation between typical B2B content margin growth and the opportunities seen by these innovators for digital convergence. Drop us a line if you'd be interested in probing the market more on this particular topic.