In his review of Chris Anderson’s ‘Free’ and its thesis that “making money around Free will be the future of business” Malcolm Gladwell writes:

“The only iron law here is the one too obvious to write a book about, which is that the digital age has so transformed the ways in which things are made and sold that there are no iron laws.”

Whilst Gladwell’s response would seem to be too obvious to be necessary, unfortunately even such a measured, rational reaction is enough to rile certain elements. The problem Gladwell makes is he is trying to have a rational debate on what is basically a very successful marketing ploy: simplify a complicated topic and market yourself as its guru. The column-inches Anderson has gained show his success. There will, however, be a large number of readers who (like me) get exasperated by his over simplification and promotion of himself as the guru.

I started filling the margins of my copy of ‘Free’ with a variety of swear words on pg. 4:

“…Surely economics must have something to say about this, I thought. But I couldn’t find anything. No theories of gratis, or pricing models that went to zero. (In fairness, some do exist, as later research would re-veal. But they  were mostly obscure academic discussions of “two- sided markets” and, as we’ll see in the economics chapter, nearly forgotten theories from the nineteenth century.)”

Obviously it wouldn’t be fair to knock someone for their inability to understand the Dewey decimal system, but Anderson then goes on to quote liberally from Predictably Irrational. ‘Predictably irrational’ is about as far from obscure academic discussion as you can get. It happens to be written by an academic, but very much a book in the popular science genre. Even more annoyingly he goes on to criticise the work as: “…directionally interesting rather than rigorously quantitative…” He makes sweeping statements left, right and centre, and then has the nerve to criticise the rigorousness of a perfectly acceptable academic pieces of work!

However, here I find myself falling into the same trap as Gladwell, arguing with the content rather than viewing it as a promotional device for Anderson. Whilst I’m sure Anderson expects to make a lot of money from the book, he also has his eye firmly on the increase in his fee for public speaking, and as such the book does a great job of marketing Anderson as the guru of ‘Free’.

Does this book turn “traditional economics upside down” ? Not really.