Being not redundant.  I was one of the few people who got to stay on.

Things remain the same.

Things remain the same.

What just happened?

NEWS FLASH: I did not lose my job this time, instead I move to International Business and Asian Studies.  I will teach Information Systems from there until the next time things change.

As you were.

I have been following the free content debate for a while and have previously discussed the issues with it here.  I am particularly struck with the idea of new business models.  A lot of the discussion was how the internet ‘levels’ the playing field.  While I think in theory this may be true, in practice it isn’t.  A better way of saying this would be: the internet could level the playing field.  Here’s where the challenge lies:

1. People only buy ‘popular’ media online.

I think the idea of the Long Tail has promise.  In fact I have it in my lectures.  You could argue that the internet is another culture with it’s own ideas on what the mainstream is, what the 80-20 rule constitutes and what they like.  The mainstream internet, things that grow to popularity on the internet, should be considered in context as being part of internet culture.   You can’t compare what becomes popular on the internet to what is considered popular on television for one very good reason.  They are two completely different mediums.  This becomes obvious when you look at how poorly the transition to the internet fiction has had.  It’s still stagnant, backwater or very very obscure.  That is internet culture. A question for artists, business people and the like is: how do internet cultures buy and sell?  How do I tell a story on the internet and support myself as an artist without losing heart?  The long tail explains the possibilities but doesn’t give us the pragmatics.

And this is my biggest problem with the ideas of internet business models.  It’s still geared towards the mainstream, just a different one: internet culture mainstream.  We have heard the mantra connect with fans and give them a reason to buy yet how do we find fans with no money?  What if you are selling something that’s unappealing to internet culture?  Then what?  This is what we need to learn.  And I am not saying that there is no long tail effect there is, my point: How much of that is simply because the internet contains so many interlocking cultures?  Can you compare the apples (TV) with oranges (internet)?  Probably but the shape, tastes and sizes of markets are completely different.   We need to look at it differently.

2. The internet could level the playing field but you have to realise it’s another field altogether

My second and final point is that the internet creates the potential for disintermediated content to become popular because it’s the internet.  Something that’s popular on television may or may not become popular on the internet.  We really need to spend more time looking at internet trends and usage before we can make the claim that it levels out the playing field.

We need new business concepts not just models

I think a way forward for internet business ideas is good quality research.  In the days of e-commerce all we had was Michael Porter on the internet.  What we need is better thinking.   I am personally hoping for this but seeing precious little more than the free culture versus copyright debate.  New ideas not the same old crap.

*Note: I am not sure this makes sense.  I am absent of mind at the moment.  Feel free to comment (constructively).

I was reading this Tumblr post someone sent me recently and there is an interesting reference to ‘fencing’ at the end of it. The idea that a debate or a metaphor can provide a fence around our ways of thinking is something I had written about ages ago.  In fact large portions of my PhD work had been involved around the ideas of conceptual framing, the idea that we create reference points to refer to things we experience.   I think the ‘idea fence’ concept is much more interesting and I want to write about it.  So I did!

Idea fences mean we create a way of seeing things that inhibits us from seeing another perspective.  Someone I know would say about a problem,’Well it’s either this or that.’  My response was, ‘why can’t it be something else?’.  The idea fences we build put the issues we want to discuss in a neat little basket.  We fence them off and say, ‘this is my position and you can only enter my idea house if you are willing to open the fence of my idea gate’.   Metaphors ahoy.

I am very good at making idea fences.  I often resist changing my ideas because I like them and have grown accustomed to having them in my mind’s garden.  Yet, I know I have to do it and I hate it.   I think I know something then I find an article or somebody says, ‘have you thought about this?’ Then I hop back on the merry go round again and wheeeeeee more ideas.   Ideas also mean power in my world, ‘Oh you are the guy who wrote that paper or you are an Information Systems person aren’t you?’   Then I am fenced in by others.  This kind of fencing reinforces the fence around me, which in essence has no place in any real terms outside of my own thoughts; and creates a comfortable seat for me to sit in and contemplate.   I am fenced and fencing.

In closing this ramble tamble, let me assure that ideas have a persistent quality.  The ingredient of persistence is ‘belief’.  That’s what makes them real.  We believe they are and so they are and we act on them and it is so.  Yet, this perspective is yet another example of a fence I have built around myself and ask me in five years, if I am still alive what I think and the chances are I will have changed my mind!

I recently got this from my ‘online fiction’ Google alert.  The first thing that sprang to mind is that EA is losing money and I was seriously questioning myself and the world I live in.  These people are the staples on the gaming industry.  Then I paused, collected my thoughts and wrote this sentence.

EA games are losing money.

Think about it.  That is a big statement.  So what are they doing to fix it:

1. Downsizing

2. Bringing out fewer games (my favourite Cricket game was one of these that suffered at the hands of this ‘downturn’.

Two things I would have thought are drastic measures for such a big player.  Why do companies downsize in a downturn?  Instead of thinking up new ideas and using the talent you have to innovate to recover lost profits, you decide to get rid of people?  Do you know what kind of message that sends to other employees?  Bringing out less titles.  Why not bring out more on a smaller scale?  As the article says:

Instead of spending $60 on a shiny new disc, many people are playing free or cheap games online, on their mobile devices and on Facebook. They are spending a few dollars here and there to buy virtual add-ons for the games, or they are signing up for subscription-based online games.

Find new models EA!  Don’t just sit around waiting for people to decide to buy disks again.  Make new models!  You are the industry leader in games and personally speaking gave me great pleasure with your titles.  What are some ways you could release a niche game cheaply and support it with trendy new ideas around new business models?

If EA games goes under then the world will end as I know it.  Well not the world… just the fun part of it.

The recent hyperbole about free business models has gotten me more than a little excited.  I have read a great deal about it, though I still haven’t found the time to listen or read Chris Anderson’s new(ish) book.  One of the things though I have noticed that’s absent from debates about ‘free business models’ is the cost that comes with running, developing and diffusing new ideas.  There is a cost.  And that cost is value.

If you want to be a leading writer, you have to write and keep at it until you get good enough.  That will take a lot of time.  If you want to sing and be the best you can, you need to practice.  Anything that’s easy or ‘at hand’ is usually simple to learn and master.   The cost versus the benefit in that equation is something like this:

Simple thing + Low Skill = Low Benefit.

However, if we raise the barrier it should look like this:

Hard thing + hard skill = High Benefit.

However, there is something missing from that equation and it’s this:

Value + Hard thing + Hard Skill = High Benefit.

You could say it this way, the more value increases the higher the cost to you and to your consumers, students, partners, chickens and whatever other relevant category you would to shove in here.

Now I have added another cost to the learning of a skill that has been overlooked.  The free business model idea hinges on value, as do most other ideas.  Without value you can work as hard as you like at giving things away and it won’t matter a damn.   If we take a poorly written book or a bad movie and say, ‘I don’t know how anyone can like that’, the answer is value.

So what is the cost associated with value?