from John Gerzema’s THE BRAND BUBBLE
The Great Age of Infrastructure
by JOHN GERZEMA on AUGUST 19, 2009
I had an interesting discussion with James Frey, author of ‘A Million Little Pieces’ and ‘Bright Shiny Morning’ the other day. He was showing me all the books he was reading on his Kindle. I think if Jeff Bezos would have been at this barbeque, he would have signed up James to do his ads. But the interesting point James raised was that the value isn’t the device, but the pipe. Kindle isn’t really beautiful, or incredibly versatile. But because Amazon has built the means to virtually access books, magazines and other literature anytime, anywhere, our reading behavior is being transformed.
Like iPod’s value is in iTunes, and iPhone in its applications, infrastructure is once again, king. Just as Tom Friedman pointed out that cheap fiber optics after the 2000 recession enabled global commerce, the investments of the early part of this decade by Amazon, Apple, Cisco and others are now bearing fruit as this recession begins to abate. And this is creating value for a whole host of new partners. Consider my conversations last week with Andrew Rashbass, CEO of the Economist, they have found a burgeoning Kindle audience, which supplements their existing print readership.