Open & Free Business Model
22 Days and Counting
In just 22 days the World Futurist Society Conference begins, approximately 1000 futurists from around the world will converge at
WorldFuture 2011; Moving from Vision to Action.
The Conference is being held at the Sheraton Wall Centre downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. If you haven’t registered to attend this forward thinking conference, get on it, you will learn much from many no matter what your curious about.
If you are fast enough you see my picture in this promo, yep, I’m speaking on Saturday July 9th at 8:30AM on The Future Of Business, see you there:
The Future Of Business – Nine Inch Nails Business Model
The Nine Inch Nails Open Core Business Model is not new, in fact it’s been well documented. So why is it that few are using the model? As I have stated here over and over again, the future of business is not a bunch of steps, a list to execute, or a set of action items, it’s how you and I think about business, how we provide what customers and follower’s want. Our view of business in the world must change, we can’t keep applying old rules to a new model. Here is a short snippet of Trent Reznor’s Open Core Business Model.
The band (NIN) merely saw something better than the record labels channels of distribution, and more importantly, it’s control over the bands music. So here’s Trent Reznor’s Business Model:
CwF + RtB = $$$$
Do you get it? Probably not, unless you have already read the case study.
This is the Open & Free Business Model working, this is really a precursor to the future of music, so what does the equation stand for or mean.
CwF is Connect With Fans, simple enough right? RtB stands for Reason To Buy. So how did they do it?
After NIN left their record label, released 36 tracks on the Internet, they were put under the Creative Commons License, and then made the first 9 tracks of those 36 available to fans, FREE! How did that help them make money, stay with me.
Nine Inch Nails – Trent Reznor, packaged their music along with other great things you couldn’t get anywhere else, that couldn’t be copied. They made two packages giving you the fans an experience to be relived over and over again, one a deluxe package at $75 and another Ultra Deluxe Package at $300, the difference between the two, the $75 package was made unlimited, the $300 package was a limited set of only 2,500. Oh, these larger packages were personally signed by Trent Reznor as well.
So what happened, well, the $300 package sold out in 30 hours, so…2,500 packages x $300 = $750,000!!!
All without the controlling record label, they did it by giving the fans something they really wanted…hot tip there. Is this starting to take shape in your mind, are starting see your business doing something your customers truly want?
Now, not all of us has the following or resources of an already successful band. That’s not what I’m try to show you. The way they looked at the record business, how they were willing to risk everything but trusting the fans, are you willing to do business by trusting the people formerly known as consumers?
This business model, the future of business has many shapes and sizes, the hard part is stepping away far enough from your own business to see how to leverage this Open & Free Business Model.
Mike Masnick shares the entire story of this business model and some of the other great things Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails did:
SHAMELESS PLUG:
I will be speaking at The World Futurist Society Conference July 8th – 10th in Vancouver, British Columbia on The Future Of Business – Open & Free Business Model. Specifically I am schedule Saturday July 9th at 8:30AM to share, it would great to meet you there.
Change the way you think about the future of business and explore what could be, I would be honored to help you.
The Future Of Business – Findability
I’m not going to beat around the bush here, I spend almost 90% of my time on Twitter, it’s where my research comes from, my business, and most of my relationships. Twitter is the service I use to expand, learn and teach what I do, FaceBook, has it’s place but I rarely spend much time there, why? I use TweetDeck , I feed multiple social networks this way, including FaceBook. Rumour has it TweetDeck is about to be purchased or already has been, by Twitter, that’s good news in my books. Twitter will be able to add so much to the experience of using their real-time service.
The secret sauce if you will, the secret tool is not that secret when trying to maximize Twitter, it’s the search in Twitter that brings the most value in terms of data. If you spend enough time listening in the Twitter search, you start to see trends, interests and needs, businesses don’t pay enough attention there in my humble opinion.
The #FutureOfBusiness hashtag is where I like to hang out, to see what others are saying and thinking about on this topic, we are headed to a day of the open & free business model. But what does that mean really. Does it mean everything is free and open, of course not, it is however, a strategy, a successful business model. So how do all these social networks fit into the equation?
Think about where you do business today, what is the business model you execute today, does it leverage social networks? And if it is, how did you determine which social network to invest your time and money in? I’m almost certain very little research went into that determination, you probably just sensed you should be on FaceBook because most of your friends and business associates said you should be there. When a business owner asks me if they should be on FaceBook or any other social network, I like to ask them why they think they should be there. Almost everytime it has nothing to do with a business case or sound data to backup that question, it is always an emotional reason, like the fear of loss. That’s not new, it’s as old as time that emotion, but it has as much power as worrying, and probably the same results worrying brings you.
So where do you spend your time and money in terms of social networks, and why? The Future Of Business is not social networks, it is however, social & mobile. Social Media is not new, the conversations you and I were having offline our entire life, has merely gone digital, they are now happening on the Internet. The difference, the world can now listen in and share your feelings, spread your conversation everywhere. Everything will create a stream everywhere.
With 3 billion people yet to hit the Internet, being found should be your primary concern, it’s going to get noisier than it is today, findability will determine the life of your business online. The best way to be found, create more content than you consume, then leverage every social network you can to help that cause.
So where do you do business, which social network do you use the most, what is the hardest part about being found for you, how do you get found? I would love to hear your thoughts on findability, not SEO.
The Future Of Business Workshop – In Abbotsford
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The Future Of Business
With Owen Greaves |
| The internet has changed the way the world does business; But will it ever stop changing? |
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Change is constant and the electronic age has served merely to speed up the rate and size of change. If you are in business, or are planning to start a business, understanding how the online world changes everything will position you not only ahead of your competitors, but as a trustworthy ally to customers. Owen Greaves will guide you to understanding the Future of Business. |
| What you can expect in the Future of Business: | |
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The Future of Business Workshop is more than social media, the Internet or the world online; it’s about looking at business differently and fighting for your Businesses Survival. Together with Owen, you will see the Future Of Business and will apply that knowledge to create new ways of embracing the future in your business.
A workbook will be provided to each participant in the 2 – 4 hour workshop to encourage home study and application of the concepts presented. |
| What you will learn in this Engaging Workshop: | Your Investment: $99 Per Person tillMay 4th Reg Price: $149.00 after May 4th, 2011 |
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Who is Owen Greaves?
Owen Greaves lives in beautiful Abbotsford, British Columbia; he is a Futurist, Thought-Leader, Keynote Speaker, Think-Tank Leader, Author, Blogger, and Strategist. He has spent countless hours exploring and understanding what the next 3 to 5 years will bring and applies the vision of reaching out and teaching this model to business people eager to listen and learn. Owen is a man who loves making the paradigm shift around media and commerce to the Internet less painful. Location: Sandman Inn, Abbotsford, B.C. To Reserve Your Seat, Contact: |
The End Of Control By Gerd Leonhard
I’m up late every night trying to find new ways to teach you the ins and outs of where business going, the future of business. It’s my hope you are actually learning something here. You’re probably seeing it’s not business as usual, that things have been changing rapidly, and it’s painful too. I hope I’m making you think long and hard about what to do next in this new open economy. As I’ve mentioned many times, the future of business is not a skill set, it’s not mechanical, it’s not even about technology, it is however, about how you and I think.
Throughout this blog I have covered a variety of topics, I even share local events in my community, I do that for couple of reasons, to keep it interesting (I hope), and that I am a real living person practicing what I preach. The difference between you and I is, I see things you don’t, and I share that foresight with the intent of helping you take your first steps toward this new world of commerce. The Future of Business is a broad topic really, there are so many paths to go down but there isn’t enough time in a day to cover it all. So I tell you about what I find in my research, in my collaboration with other futurists, and then hopefully you can see the same patterns and trends being presented before us.
You probably find it difficult to implement strategies and tactics to an uncertain future, to something you can’t see clearly. That’s why I write about it, the best way to figure it out is to learn, find sources that can help you understand the paradigm shift we are going through. I pay attention to other futurists, 265 of them, I collaborate with some, and I do countless hours of research of my own, and I don’t get paid to do it! I’ll talk about that another time.
One of those 265 futurists I refer to is Gerd Leonhard, he lives Basil, Switzerland. He heads up The Futures Agency, The Futures Agency is structured as a virtual organization with global reach, deep knowledge and domain expertise, and extensive experience as strategic advisers. He is a digital mentor of mine, I respect his work, and he makes it interesting.
Now you may have noticed there’s push back from the corporate world, most Industrial Age businesses, they are throwing up paywalls everywhere, trying to control you, trying to prevent you from having information freely. Gerd talks about the end of control regularly, he even wrote a book on the topic a few years ago, so I’m not even going to try preaching it, I’ll let you read his book. You can get it here: End Of Control By Gerd Leonhard