Keep Things in Motion
“What is given away feeds again and again, while what is kept feeds only once and leaves us hungry.”
“Scarcity appears when wealth cannot flow.”
These quotes from Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift illustrate one of the core benefits Creative Commons brings to business. Resources licensed with Creative Commons have fluidity. They are free to be disseminated far and wide bringing value to the creator and all who use them.
Resources locked down with copyright, on the other hand, are encumbered with restrictions that slow their movement and use. Things that are not in motion and use are not generating value.
The wonderful Medium lithograph Why Give Away Your Work for Free features acclaimed authors Cory Doctorow, Paulo Coelho, Neil Gaiman, Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, and Hugh Howey sharing insights on why works in motion generate value.
“My problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity, and free ebooks generate more sales than they displace.” Cory Doctorow
“It’s an oxymoronic truth in almost all forms of commercial art: The more you give away, the more you sell.” Hugh Howey
“I saw the first pirated edition of one of my books, so I said I’m going to post it online. There was a difficult moment in Russia; they didn’t have much paper. I put this first copy online and I sold, in the first year, 10,000 copies there. And in the second year it jumped to 100,000 copies. So I said, “It is working.” Then I started putting other books online, knowing that if people read a little bit and they like it, they are going to buy the book.” Paolo Coelho
“Give it away for free… you must get your work seen by the world. And there will always be those who download/use/distribute your work for free, possibly illegally. But this is a risk you have to take in order to get it seen by those who will pay for it.” Chase Jarvis
Distributing a work for free is a way for these authors to build an audience. Using Creative Commons is a good way to make the market aware that you exist. When something is open it can be disseminated quickly and widely to people everywhere. You may have created a great work but if no one knows about it then its not generating you, or anyone else value.
Creative Commons licenses reduce friction. They grease the way for goods to move. They create market awareness. They build reputation. They generate word of mouth and interest. Creative Commons is the circulation system for the digital era.
This past week I was generously hosted by the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba Australia where I led an open business models workshop for Oceania OERu university partners.
Everyone worked on designing their own open business model using the open business model canvas. Customers on OERu partner institution open business models canvases included:
- new students who are financially excluded from university access
- international students outside of Australia and New Zealand including students in developing countries who have limited access to education
- new to country migrants
- refugees
- non-traditional students looking for a low stakes way to assess whether university is for them — aspiration raising
- try before you buy students
- students who need extra time or, alternatively, the flexibility to fast track through a program of study
- students looking to prep for university and ease the transition from secondary school
For the most part these students are not the regular students these universities currently teach. These are new students outside of their catchment area and outside of the traditionally targeted 18–24 year olds who are simply advancing from secondary school to higher education.
For OERu partner universities Open Educational Resources (OER) courses allow them to expand their reach, generating awareness, and engagement with a whole new audience. OER courses, licensed with Creative Commons, are accessible, fluid, in motion, available for use by all.
Open Source Software business models also emphasize benefits of an expanded market. During the workshop I used charts from Dirk Riehle’s The Economic Motivation of Open Source Software to show how switching from closed source software to open source software can result in more customers and higher profits.
Works licensed with Creative Commons are like water. Their fluidity lets them flow, benefiting you and those they nourish. Motion generates shared wealth.
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Lewis Hyde, The Gift. (New York: Vintage Books, 2007). Pages 26 & 27.
Dirk Riehle. “The Economic Motivation of Open Source Software: Stakeholder Perspectives.” IEEE Computer, vol. 40, no. 4 (April 2007). Page 25–32. The paper is available as a PDF file as well as online. © 2007 IEEE.
