Jorge Cauz

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Jorge Aguilar Cauz is an American businessman and the president of Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., the publishers of the Encyclopædia Britannica, a position which he was appointed to in November 2003.

Cauz is a graduate of the Kellogg Graduate School of Management of Northwestern University, and prior to joining Britannica, served as a management consultant for Andersen Consulting and A.T. Kearney.

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[edit] Britannica career

Cauz was hired by Britannica as a consultant in 1996, and then would later serve a variety of executive positions (including senior vice president of international operations, and chief operating officer of Internet operations) prior to his appointment as president. During that time, he played a key role in the company's marketing strategies, including the publication of all-digital editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica.[1]

One of the key aspects of Cauz's tenure is the emergence of the Internet as both an opportunity and a threat in the encyclopedia business. In a 2000 interview, Cauz remarked that in an Internet-dominated market, "you have to be free to be relevant". [2] Britannica has, in that time, introduced a free (albeit abridged) online version of the encyclopedia, as well as online subscriptions for readers willing to pay for unabridged content.

[edit] Britannica and Wikipedia

During Cauz's tenure, officials from Britannica have become outspoken in their criticism of the freely-editable online encyclopedia Wikipedia, a reference work which is now the world's largest encyclopedia (in terms of articles), and which many (including critics) view as a significant competitive threat to Britannica[3], a threat which Cauz has downplayed.[4] In July 2006, Cauz personally entered the fray in an interview in New Yorker Magazine, in which he stated that Wikipedia had "decline(d) into a hulking, mediocre mass of uneven, unreliable, and, many times, unreadable articles" and that "Wikipedia is to Britannica as American Idol is to the Juilliard School."[5].

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://corporate.britannica.com/press/releases/cauz.html Encyclopædia Britannica News Releases: Jorge Cauz named president of Encyclopædia Britannica
  2. ^ http://mindframe-ie.com/dotcom.html How Dot-Communism Is Driving Encyclopedia Britannica Out Of Business
  3. ^ Nicholas Carr (2005-10-03). The amorality of Web 2.0. Rough Type. Retrieved on July 15, 2006.
  4. ^ Leslie Walker (2004-09-09). Spreading Knowledge, The Wiki Way. Washington Post. Retrieved on July 26, 2006.
  5. ^ Schiff, Stacy. "Know It All", The New Yorker, 2006-07-31.
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