How much is the future of business
Jinfo Blog

28th March 2008

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It is a very thought-provoking article by Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of Wired: Free! Why $0.00 is the future of business http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free. One of his key messages is that when something becomes so cheap that you can just waste and waste, it is time to make it free. Things that can be wasted isn't always of no use. On the contrary, free access to certain resources opens new possibilities that otherwise would never emerge. In the command-line days of computers, conserving transistors was more important than making computers easy to use. So only the skilled ones like programmers could use them. When programmers could waste transistors for better user interface, more people in the world discovered what can be done with computers. Case in point is digital information. Nowadays, storage, bandwidth, and processing power are so cheap that manufacturing (duplication) and distribution of digital contents cost virtually nothing or without an appreciable cost. Although some may argue that creating knowledge-intense original contents is never cheap, digital information in a broad sense is no longer scarce and much can be "wasted". The key benefit is obvious: More people in the world can access more information. The true benefits of free information access are profound and yet to be fully understood. Nevertheless one of the consequences could well be around the creativity unlocked from people empowered by the information freely accessible. Connected with appropriate context, information itself can inspire new ideas that speed up problem-solving, be it new businesses or a better world. The value of information is transformed and embedded in what the information enables, as some of the key messages have implied in "the power of information" report http://digbig.com/4tyjh mentioned earlier here at LiveWire. An analogy is time. We all have time. Time is precious and can be associated with high price tags but only if something valuable – or better scarce – is created or can be expected as the result of using the time. Anything worth your time is of value, no matter it is emotional or physical or material. Otherwise time itself has no value and can be wasted. So is information – its value lies in decisions supported, actions enabled, people connected, products created, customers acquired, problems solved… Scale up, nail down. So focus on the results of what information enables. Our business of future sure has value of greater than zero.

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