13. Chris Anderson, "FREE! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business"

PARC Forum: March 27, 2008, 4:00 p.m., George E. Pake Auditorium, Palo Alto, CA , USA

FREE! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine & Author, The Long Tail

The Web has become the land of the free. The idea that you can make money by giving something away is no longer radical -- free has emerged as a full-fledged economy. Not only is technology giving companies greater flexibility in how broadly they can define their markets, but anything that touches digital networks quickly feels the effect of falling costs. In this Forum, Anderson will discuss the rise of "freeconomics" and technologies driving the spread of free business models across the economy. Between new ways companies have found to subsidize products and the falling cost of doing business in this digital age, the opportunities to adopt a free business model of some sort have never been greater.



Chris Anderson is Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine, a position he took in 2001. Since then he has led the magazine to six National Magazine Award nominations, winning the prestigious top prize for General Excellence in 2007 and in 2005, a year in which he was also named Editor of the Year by Advertising Age magazine. He is the author of New York Times bestselling book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, which was published in 2006, and runs a blog on the subject at longtail.com. In 2007, the book won a prestigious Loeb Award as the best business book of the year and Anderson was named one of the “Time 100” -- the newsmagazine’s list of the 100 most influential men and women in the world.

Previously, Anderson was at The Economist. He also started The Economist’s Internet coverage in 1994 and directed its initial web strategy. Anderson's media career began at the science journals Nature and Science, where he served in several editorial capacities. Anderson holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from George Washington University and studied Quantum Mechanics and Science Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.