Jorge Aguilar Cauz is an American businessman born in Spain in 1965 and the president of Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., the publishers of the Encyclopædia Britannica, a position to which he was appointed in November 2003.
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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.[1] [2]
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". [3] 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. Since his tenure, it is believed that Britannica has succeeded in transitioning its business model into that of a digital publisher and while its revenues are lower, Britannica has been profitable since 2004. [4]Since his tenure, it is believed that Britannica has succeeded in transitioning its business model into that of a digital publisher and while its revenues are lower, Britannica has been profitable since 2004. [5]
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[6], a threat which Cauz has downplayed.[7] In July 2006, Cauz personally entered the fray in an interview in The New Yorker, 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."[8]
In 2008, he stressed that in EB new efforts to participate in online collaboration of encyclopedic content, that recognizing experts was a requirement in order to achieve objectivity and high quality.[9]
   | Encyclopædia Britannica News Releases: Jorge Cauz named president of ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' - Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Corporate Site |
| | Spreading Knowledge, The Wiki Way - Spreading Knowledge, The Wiki Way (washingtonpost.com) |
| | The amorality of Web 2.0 - Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: The amorality of Web 2.0 |
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