Free, the Future of Business?
Posted Aug 23 in Tyler Arnold
A Wired article struck a cord with me, and also managed to make me ponder about the future of business and capitalism as we know it. Over at Wired, Chris Anderson discusses his new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price.
From his article, he quotes:
Nature is so wasteful because scattershot strategies are the best way to do what mathematicians refer to as fully exploring “the potential space.” Imagine a desert with two pools of water separated by some distance. If you’re a plant growing next to one of those pools, you can follow one of two different reproductive strategies. You can drop seeds near your roots, where there’s a pretty good chance they’ll find water. This is safe but soon leads to crowding. Or you can toss the seeds to the wind and let them float far away. This means that almost all will die, but it’s the only way to find that second pool of water, where life can expand into a new niche, perhaps a richer one. The way to get from what the mathematicians call a local maximum to the global maximum is to explore a lot of fruitless minima along the way. It’s wasteful, in a sense, but it can pay off in the end.
I’d suggest checking out the article and seeing how you can prepare your business for an age of abundance. Great food for thought!
Christopher M. Schutte Says:
Posted August 24th, 2009 at 10:30 am
The article is a good read, but I’d suggest that everyone just go to iTunes and download the book to their iPod or iPhone. True to the book’s premise, Chris Anderson is offering the book for free. It’s a great read! Err – listen!
Tyler Arnold Says:
Posted August 24th, 2009 at 11:12 am
Excellent point! Great to see he’s using his own principals with the book.
I may have to give it a listen…
Kevin Kastner Says:
Posted August 25th, 2009 at 9:44 am
I’ve been living the Free model for the last 3+ years and can tell you it’s a tough row to hoe. This article and the audio book reveals some great nuggets however, and I do also recommend you give it a listen!
admin Says:
Posted August 25th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Kevin,
You have LONG been more into the free model than I have.
Perhaps I will just need a little bit more time to be “sold”
- Tyler Arnold