Publisher's Synopsis
The economics of freedom are founded on a vision: to create thriving businesses while making essential goods available and affordable to everyone. Society has acquired financial wealth, accumulated knowledge to educate the planet, and distribution power to share goods produced by a business. Capitalism has done wonders for nations, for the successful, but from birth so many are still lacking essentials. As if wealth could not be shared within the system. The ideals of Marxism and Socialism found themselves incompatible with human nature. Where they searched for freedom, they found laziness, inefficiency and counter-incentives. Is sharing bound to remain a philanthropic endeavor in capitalist systems? Is economic freedom deterministically limited to those born in the right place, a distant utopia for the rest? The Mind Share Market explores an alternative capitalistic society: creating hyper-competitive businesses through a hybrid economy of monetary transactions coupled with goods available and affordable to all. Pujol, a practitioner, provides a blueprint to the models of an economy of sharing: ethical subsidies, open source, freemium, and multi-sided markets. In an economy of strength where no one is left behind, freedom becomes attainable to those who choose it. ************************************** "Pujol unearths the secret sauce fueling today's dot com darlings and shows how these business models can be applied to virtually any industry" -- Apruva Pratap, vice president of Global Strategy, InterContinental Hotels Group "For anyone new to free versus paid business strategies, not reading this book would be like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute" -- Marc Fleury, founder of JBoss and OpenRemote "Pujol presents a radical way of looking at pre-sales: Marketing is fragile unless it is productive. Marketers can gain robustness by simply adding value - before anything is sold, to their message" -- Marten Mickos, CEO of Eucalyptus Systems and former CEO of MySQL "A masterful work turning a practitioner's experience into actionable business logic, and just great story telling" -- Marshall Van Alstyne, professor at Boston University & researcher at MIT "I have long been a believer that "Free is a great way to get paid." Pujol demonstrates exactly how this works in The Mind Share Market." -- Fred Wilson, venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures "Hitting on the topic from strategic to practical, The Mind Share Market belongs on the desk of all Web entrepreneurs and online marketing professionals." -- Sam Niccolls, lead online marketing strategist at Foundry Interactive "The Mind Share Market is a blueprint for entrepreneurs to build, serve and monetize business communities, a place where both free users and paying customers are kings." -- Patrik Backman, CEO, Open Ocean Capital "Insightful and captivating - a Must Read for anyone launching or managing free and paid products." -- Mark Burton, Chairman of the Board at Zend Technologies, Board Member at Infobright, Mulesoft and Jaspersoft "My company makes money using the Freemium model. I can directly relate to the ideas that Pujol presents in The Mind Share Market and see immediate opportunities to improve our business." -- Rohit Nadhani, founder and CEO, Webyog "We are in the middle of a Strategic Inflection Point that is profoundly changing how products are priced and sold. The Mind Share Market will help you understand all aspects of this SIP so you can craft a strategy to compete effectively in the brave new world that is unfolding as you read these words. " -- John Doggett, senior lecturer at the McCombs School of Business "Pujol has put together a framework for the new economy which is both engaging and educational. It's the first publication I've encountered that both shares the stories of, and explains the science behind, what's becoming the founding principle of so many new enterprises." -- James Farmer, founder and CEO, Edublogs
