Lately, the area of business models built around free is getting some well deserved attention. There are some very smart people thinking and talking about the area of abundance economy and free. If you are interested in finding out more about the ideas behind free business models, you should check out these people.
Chris Anderson
As I mentioned in another blogpost, Chris is probably leading the pack of thinkers in this area. Previously he effectively communicated the idea of a marked of niches, in his book “The Long Tail”. Although the ideas behind this concept were known before, he successfully explained them in an easily understandable manner. He is currently finishing a book called “free” where he talks about ….. free.
Up to the release of his video he writes a blog about the subject.
This video explains his ideas in 3 minutes
Mike Masnick
Is the founder of the techdirt blog which, is about technology and tech-related issues. He has taken an active interest in the economy of abundance and business models with free. So among the posts on legal issues and other tech news, there are quite a few good posts on the subject of “free” These posts are well written and generate a lot of attention and discussion, which can be seen by the huge amount of comments (some posts have over 200 comments).
He posts many times a day and on a lot of different topics, which makes it a bit hard to follow him sometimes. Yet it is definitely worth making the effort, great stuff. A good place to start is his “Grand Unified Theory on The Economics of Free”
Cory Doctorow
Is a science fiction writer and crusader for open rights. He releases his books as a free download with a creative commons license. As one of the first authors to do this, he has demonstrated that it can make business sense to release your product for free.
In his books he also deals with specific issues; one example of this is his novel “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom”. Here he describes a future society of non-scarcity.
Today music, movies, pictures and text are non scares, which means that it is virtually free to duplicate them, thus making the marginal cost per item close to zero.
The views in his book are also valid for physical objects. He describes a society of infinite free products and the consequences this has.
Besides writing, he thinks, writes and speaks about issues such as intellectual property, creative commons and digital rights.
Yochai Benkler
Is essential if you want a more theoretical overview of areas such as peer production and the economics of freemium.
Lawrence Lessig has called Benkler “the leading intellectual of the information age.” I really like his essay “ Coase’s pinguin” and his book “Wealth Of Networks” especially chapter 2 – Some Basic Economics of Information Production and Innovation. Here he lays out the basic economic premise behind freemium.
Kevin Kelly
Is the founding executive editor of “wired” and has written several books. He is considered an expert in digital culture and sometimes writes things related to free.
There are many other interesting thinkers, but in my opinion, these are the most important ones in this area.
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