Information Wants to Be Shared

by Joshua Gans

Stewart Brand famously declared, "Information wants to be free." Except he didn't (not really). And it doesn't.

Information is much more complicated than that. What information really wants--what makes it more valuable, useful, and immediate, Joshua Gans argues--is to be shared.

Using the tools and logic of information economics, Gans shows how sharing enhances most information's value. He also shows how the business models of traditional media companies, gatekeepers who have relied on scarcity and control, have collapsed in the face of new technologies. Equally important, he argues that sharing can revive moribund, threatened industries even as he examines platforms that have, almost accidentally, thrived in this new environment.

Provocative, intriguing, and useful, Information Wants to Be Shared will change the way you think about your ideas and the media you use to consume and produce them.

HBR Singles provide brief yet potent business ideas, in digital form, for today's thinking professional.

Genres: Technology, Economics

101 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 2, 2012

About the author

Joshua Gans is a Professor of Strategic Management and holder of the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair of Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Rotman School of Management, the University of Toronto (with a cross-appointment in the Department of Economics). Joshua is also Chief Economist of the University of Toronto's Creative Destruction Lab.

Reviews

[Stephanie Sun · Rating 4 out of 5]

“With respect to books, publishers have desperately reacted to digitization by replicating the offerings to consumers available in the physical world. That has meant a model of book ownership rather than of shared use. But book ownership is a recent development, prior to which books were shared goods. Indeed, it is a mistake to think of books as objects at all when they actually offer a claim on attention. This means that the goal should be for a given set of content from a book to be widely read, and this, in turn, implies allowing individuals who have read books to have an incentive to communicate their value to others."

Word.

Just one of many Word.-able moments in this nice, thoughtful, well-researched single about the terrifying changes upon us due to digitization of media, publicity, and private communication. Let Gans talk you down from the ledge.

Gans's background is in economics, but he writes for a general audience here.

[Joe Wikert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the most insightful and inspiring books I've read about the publishing industry in a long, long time. Highly recommended...and a fairly short read.

[Ania Wieckowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strong argument for media business models that take advantage of the theory that information wants to be shared (not free).