Posted by Luke in 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?
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