Wrestling with the big questions of tech and content distribution

I haven't gotten to the reveal of the Hidden Reason Digital Comics Never Took Off in the latest episode of the Comic Industry Insiders podcast, but I'm already intrigued. I'm only 15-20 minutes into an hour and half plus episode, and they're already discussing the big questions. I'm linking to the episode for this reason: if you're thinking about the same sort of questions, questions of how digital content fits in with a traditional industry, you might find this episode really interesting.

I'm a comics fan, and I've been curious about what the Sweet team are doing with their new Sweet Shop digital comic store. I'm doubly curious because it seems like they're wrestling with what I think are the right questions – What makes a digital comics shop distinct from brick and mortar shops? Why do we need something new instead of just using Kindle? Why is it so hard for an online comics app to succeed?

While these are all comic industry question, the same sort of questions apply to almost any industry today that deals in content. At some point, your content business is going to have a traditional component and a new component. How do those compliment each other? How do they differentiate? How does technology enable that? How does technology get in the way?

We all need to be wrestling with these kinds of questions more, while also building out something new. I love hearing the thought process of anyone who is doing the same.