The Art of Opportunity

Chapter 1

When Thomas Ebeling became the new CEO of ProSiebenSat.¹ Media AG (Pro7) in 2009, he faced a familiar problem: how to grow the business. Pro7 was the leading media company in the German TV advertising market with their core business of free TV—financed by advertising. Mr. Ebeling's challenge was how to grow the business and achieve over €1 billion in incremental revenues by 2018. Resorting to traditional strategic moves, expanding existing businesses and offerings, would certainly not do the trick.

Pro7 crafted a unique strategy for a new business area making TV advertising available to start-ups, and small and medium-sized companies, two customer segments that traditionally couldn't afford TV advertising and were seen as unprofitable by the industry. One year after the new business had been launched, it had already generated €20 million in profit. Five years later, Pro7 had achieved tremendous success with its new strategy. In fact, the strategy worked so well that in 2015, the €1 billion plus target was increased to €1.85 billion.

Business professionals and scholars admire achievements like these and wonder how Pro7 tapped into new markets and developed new business areas. Finding and seizing opportunities for new growth is, after all, the Holy Grail of business. And if Pro7 didn't use traditional growth methods, exactly how did they arrive at new offerings, complete with innovative business models and revenue models, to reach entirely new customer segments?