Chris Anderson > Quotes

“as Joe Kraue, CEA of JotSpot ... puts it, "Up until now, the focus has been on dozens of markets of millions, instead of millions of markets of dozens.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More

“When the tools of production are available to everyone, everyone becomes a producer.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“In a world of infinite choice, context—not content—is king.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“In fact, as these companies offered more and more (simply because they could), they found that demand actually followed supply. The act of vastly increasing choice seemed to unlock demand for that choice. Whether it was latent demand for niche goods that was already there or a creation of new demand, we don't yet know. But what we do know is that the companies for which we have the most complete data - netflix, Amazon, Rhapsody - sales of products not offered by their bricks-and-mortar competitors amounted to between a quarter and nearly half of total revenues - and that percentage is rising each year. in other words, the fastest-growing part of their businesses is sales of products that aren't available in traditional, physical retail stores at all.

These infinite-shelf-space businesses have effectively learned a lesson in new math: A very, very big number (the products in the Tail) multiplied by a relatives small number (the sales of each) is still equal to a very, very big number. And, again, that very, very big number is only getting bigger.

What's more, these millions of fringe sales are an efficient, cost-effective business. With no shelf space to pay for - and in the case of purely digital services like iTunes, no manufacturing costs and hardly any distribution fees - a niche product sold is just another sale, with the same (or better) margins as a hit. For the first time in history, hits and niches are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More

“We're strange creatures, we humans. At one level, we just want to eat, drink, play, and acquire more stuff. But life on the hedonic treadmill is ultimately dissatisfying. A beautiful remedy is to hop off it and instead begin pursuing an idea that's bigger than you are.”
― Chris Anderson, TED Talks

“Diamonds can be found anywhere.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“But our tendency to give scarcity more attention than abundance has caused us to ignore the many examples of abundance that have arisen in our own lifetime, like corn, for starters. The problem is that once something becomes abundant, we tend to ignore it,”
― Chris Anderson, Free: The Future of a Radical Price

“For too long we’ve been suffering the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare, subjected to brain-dead summer blockbusters and manufactured pop. Why? Economics. Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching—a market response to inefficient distribution.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“A physical store cannot be reconfigured on the fly to cater to each customer based on his or her particular interests.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“What we're now starting to see, as online retailers begin to capitalize on their extraordinary economic efficiences, is the shape of a massive mountain of choice emerging where before there was just a peak.... By necessity, the conomics of traditional, hit-driven retail limit choice. When you dramatically lower the costs of connecting supply and demand, it changes not just the numbers, but the entire nature of the market. This is not just a quantiative change, but a qualitative one, too. Bringing niches within reach reveals latent demand for noncommercial content. Then, as demand shifts toward the niches, the economics of provided them improve further, and so on, creating a positive feedback loop that will transform entire industries - and the culture - for decades to come.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More

“The way to compete with free is to move past the abundance to find the adjacent scarcity.”
― Chris Anderson, Free: The Future of a Radical Price

“Every field of knowledge is different, but they are all connected. And they often rhyme. This means that something in the way you describe your process may give me a crucial insight or catalyze a new thought in me. This is how ideas form when we spark off each other.”
― Chris Anderson, TED Talks

“5. Redefine your market.”
― Chris Anderson, Free: The Future of a Radical Price

“With the evolution of online retail, however, has come the revelation that being able to recategorize and rearrange products on the fly unlocks their real value.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“The past ten years have been about discovering new ways to create, invent, and work together on the Web. The next ten years will be about applying those lessons to the real world.”
― Chris Anderson, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution

“ninety percent of everything is crud.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“A few years ago, most of these authors wouldn’t have been published at all—and that would have been enough to discourage many of them from writing a book in the first place. But today, the economics of publishing have fallen so low that nearly everyone can do it. That means people can write books for whatever reason they want, and they don’t need to depend on some publisher deciding if the book is worth taking to market. The effect of this is being felt throughout the industry, right up to the giant booksellers. In 2005, Barnes & Noble sold 20 percent more unique titles than it had in 2004, something its CEO, Steve Riggio, attributes to three forces: (1) the efficiencies of print-on-demand, which keeps more books in print; (2) the increase in the number of smaller and independent publishers; and (3) self-publishing.”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“What entrepreneurs quickly learn is that they need to price their product at least 2.3 times its cost to allow for at least one 50 percent margin for them and another 50 percent margin for their retailers (1.5 × 1.5 = 2.25). That first 50 percent margin for the entrepreneur is really mostly covering the hidden costs of doing business at a scale that they hadn’t thought of when they first started,”
― Chris Anderson, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution

“that country became a center for making mobile phone components and handsets. 5. The controller board is made in China because U.S. companies long ago transferred manufacture of printed circuit boards to Asia. 6. The lithium polymer battery is made in China because battery development and manufacturing migrated to China along with the development and manufacture of consumer electronics and notebook”
― Chris Anderson, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution

“Y aunque Steve Jobs fuese un marginado adolescente genial, no hay muchos más como él en Apple. La empresa puede «pensar diferente», pero actualmente contrata de forma muy parecida a la de cualquier otra buena empresa: basándose en los títulos académicos. De esa forma sólo se contrata a gente que desea ser contratada. Lo cual elimina a todos aquellos que, estando en cualquier otro lugar, aman el trabajo que están haciendo y no desean dejarlo. La tendencia es a no contratar niños, ancianos y delincuentes, con independencia de lo listos que sean. Tampoco a cualquiera que no sepa guardar un secreto o no desea verse atado por los términos de un contrato laboral, etc. Y, sin embargo, hay gente inteligente, e incluso brillante, que cae dentro de todas esas categorías excluidas. Por ser una empresa en lugar de una comunidad abierta, Apple cae dentro de la Ley de Joy.”
― Chris Anderson, Makers: La nueva revolución industrial (Nuevos paradigmas)

“All forms of free boil down to variations of the same thing: shifting money around from product to product, person to person, between now and later, or into nonmonetary markets and back out again. Economists call these “cross-subsidies.”
― Chris Anderson

“Al igual que en un servicio de fotografía, usted también puede optar por compartir públicamente los archivos y dejar que otros los copien para sí. Incluso puede crear un «escaparate» en el cual usted gana una parte de los ingresos cada vez que alguien fabrica algo que usted ha colgado. Ponoko no posee gran parte de la maquinaria de producción. En vez de eso, es un intermediario de software entre los consumidores y los talleres de fabricación con capacidad sobrante. La página web de Ponoko efectúa el complicado trabajo de enseñar a Makers potencialmente inexpertos a crear archivos de diseño y colgarlos de forma que puedan entenderlos las máquinas. Recomienda materiales, calcula precios y gestiona la transacción.”
― Chris Anderson, Makers: La nueva revolución industrial (Nuevos paradigmas)

“On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.”
― Chris Anderson, Free: The Future of a Radical Price

“Si la industria del espectáculo en el siglo XXse centraba en el éxito y la popularidad de los productos, la del siglo XXI se centrará en los nichos.”
― Chris Anderson, La economía Long Tail

“The labor arbitrage view of global trade, a model that goes back to the dawn of the First Industrial Revolution, assumes that manufacturing will always flow to low-cost countries. But the new automation view suggests that the advantages of cheap labor are shrinking while other factors—closeness to the ultimate consumer, transportation costs (including possible carbon taxes), flexibility, quality, and reliability—are rising.”
― Chris Anderson, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution

“Esa forma de pensar puede ser comprensible, pero es errónea. Obtener un beneficio razonable es la única manera de crear una empresa sostenible. Permítame poner un ejemplo. Usted fabrica cien unidades de su delicioso juguete de cuerda cortado a láser que representa a un pequeño tamborilero. Entre la madera, el corte con láser, el hardware, la caja y las instrucciones a usted le cuesta 20 dólares construir uno. Pongamos que lo etiqueta a 25 dólares para cubrir cualquier gasto que no haya previsto y empieza a venderlos. Puesto que se trata de un juguete divertido y que sale muy barato, se vende rápidamente. Usted cae de pronto en la cuenta de que debe volver a hacerlo todo de nuevo, esta vez con una tirada de un millar. En lugar de tener que aportar un par de miles de dólares para comprar materiales, va a necesitar 10.000 dólares. En lugar de empaquetar las piezas en su tiempo libre, debe contratar a alguien para hacerlo. Necesitará alquilar un espacio para guardar”
― Chris Anderson, Makers: La nueva revolución industrial (Nuevos paradigmas)

“DEMOCRATIZING THE TOOLS OF PRODUCTION What’s new about this is the way it’s done, not the concept itself. Indeed, Karl Marx was perhaps the original prophet of the Pro-Am economy. As Demos notes, “In The German Ideology, written between 1845 and 1847, Marx maintained that labor—forced, unspontaneous and waged work—would be superseded by self-activity.“ Eventually, he hoped, there would be a time when ”material production leaves every person surplus time for other activities.“ Marx”
― Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More

“Rather than top-down innovation by some of the biggest companies in the world, we’re seeing bottom-up innovation by countless individuals, including amateurs, entrepreneurs, and professionals.”
― Chris Anderson, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution

“Una vez que usted ha creado algo en un programa CAD (de computer-aided design, «diseño asistido por ordenador»), puede elegir entre «impresión local» (un único prototipo en su impresora 3-D o en otro dispositivo doméstico) o «impresión mundial» (enviarlo a una oficina de servicios para fabricarlo masivamente). La única diferencia real es que enviarlo a una oficina de servicios implica una tarjeta de crédito o un envío, igual que ocurre con los servicios de impresión de fotos que usted ya utiliza.”
― Chris Anderson, Makers: La nueva revolución industrial (Nuevos paradigmas)

“O sea que, ya ve: la maquinaria industrial de los imperios de medios de comunicación más grandes del siglo XX transformada en una cosa que usted puede manejar desde su propio ordenador. Ayer las instalaciones informáticas más grandes del mundo trabajaban para el gobierno, las grandes empresas y los laboratorios de investigación. Hoy trabajan para usted. Esto ha sido lo que ha traído consigo el desktop.”
― Chris Anderson, Makers: La nueva revolución industrial (Nuevos paradigmas)