Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hi everyone,

This book is great, and I just had to recommend it to everyone, as it gives a new an interesting view on how to collaborate and do business. I`m sure it can be of great inspiration for many, and I wrote a short note about it on my blog, if you wanna know more before checking out the actual book.

Enjoy -> `Open source` your company to gain great competitive advantages

Best,
Malte


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My personal blog on strategy, marketing, branding and general topics on business TheBusinessUpdater.com

Alright, let`s consider a world in which corporations and business are modelled on Linux and open-source volunteer work.

Let`s say I`ve invented the Widget and I want to sell it to make enough money that I can live comfortably until I die. First of all, I didn`t invent the Widget, it was a collaborative effort. So I can`t sell it, nor can I retain the profits from sales if I could do so.

How do I live comfortably?

Well in that example take any company selling services and consultancies helping other people incorporate these technologies and using them efficiently. There are a large number of companies working in the web industry, basing their model on open source technology. The technology is free, but not everyone knows how to use it, how to personalize it to fit their needs etc, and this creates a whole new `industry` within the web business.

Now the book is mostly about how to use the whole idea of mass collaboration in a regular business, and it is very interesting. Take the company Goldcorp who is a mining company. In this business most companies keep their exploration data very secret, as this can help them keep their gold for themselves. The problem is that the analysis and exploration is very complicated, and require huge financial resources, which doesn`t at all guarantee results. The company CEO (or maybe the former) figured out a way of how to use a huge network (outsourcing you could call it), where they put out their exploration data to the public, with cash prizes for the people actually helping with the results. I don`t remember the exact growth number, but the company doubled their exploration results many times, as "more minds produce more", and `opening up` their business helped them into great success, something that no one had thought about in that business...

You should really give it a read Craig, it`s a great read :-)

Hope everything`s good!

Regards,
Malte



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My personal blog on strategy, marketing, branding and general topics on business TheBusinessUpdater.com

Well, this still sounds to me as though it`s pretty much standard business, just opening up a project to include outside vendors. However, I`ll put the book on my "list" and read more about the details.

It does remind me, though, of how many entrepreneurs we get on these forums, looking for ideas or help but not letting anyone know their product, business, or anything else. It`s all "top secret" and so what kind of actual help could they possibly get? In some issues there would be either trade secrets or proprietary information, though, which wouldn`t lend itself well to "open source."

:-)
craig

Thanks! nice sharing.

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