Welcome to the professional website and personal weblog of Jeremy Del Rio. Whether you're a client, friend, or curious onlooker, please don't stay a spectator. Engage the conversation. Your contributions matter here.
« Why Politicians Need Your Help with School Reform | Home | Friday Foto Finish »
On Independence Day Eve, a New Free Debate Rages
By Jeremy | July 3, 2009
Busines/internet/marketing gurus and best-selling authors Chris Anderson, Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki and others all weighed in today on a debate about Free on the day before we celebrate political freedom.
Fascinating timing, but I suspect the release of Anderson’s book Free: The Future of a Radical Price
Notwithstanding the irony, the debate is notable because it should fundamentally alter the way we think about distributing ideas, publishing content, and organizing communities. This article at Wired magazine (where Chris Anderson serves as editor-in-chief) introduces the idea brilliantly and frames it as the difference between managing scarcity and managing abundance.
What this boils down to is the difference between abundance- and scarcity-based business models. If you’re controlling a scarce resource, like the prime-time broadcast schedule, you have to be discriminating. There are real costs associated with those half-hour chunks of network time, and the penalty for failing to reach tens of millions of viewers with them is calculated in red ink and lost careers. No wonder TV executives fall back on sitcom formulas and celebrities—they’re safe bets in an expensive game.
But if you’re tapping into an abundant resource, you can afford to take chances, since the cost of failure is so low. Nobody gets fired when your YouTube video is viewed only by your mom.
Gladwell critiques it similarly brilliantly, to which Godin, Anderson, and others offer compelling replies.
Topics: books, chris anderson, economics, free, guy kawasaki, malcolm gladwell, open source, seth godin, technology | No Comments »
Comments are closed.