Ann Nurock’s first contribution was well read by the Biznewz community. This one is also sure to hit the mark. She has applied her mind to the growing wave of businesses which follow the free-mium model – or work on ways of encouraging sharing to eliminate waste. An enlightening read. – AH
By Ann Nurock*
In the old economy and traditional thinking, innovation was designed and implemented in-house often in complete secrecy. But in the new world of business that is information based and knowledge driven we have moved into an economy that is more about open innovation. Open source economies where people have to adapt to and adopt a greater spirit of abundance.
An open source economy is defined by Wikipedia one of the greatest examples of its kind “as an economy in which the development of goods and services happens via open collaboration between independent stakeholders on the global level. It is an economy where the rate of innovation across all sectors is significantly higher than the rate of innovation provided by proprietary research and development characteristic of the 20th century.”
The key principles of this trend are clearly collaboration and sharing. These days, many organizations would say they have collaborative cultures (or aspire to, at least), but where the open source way really shines is in its ability to inspire people to collaborate beyond the boundaries of their own organization. And beyond the confines of their own imaginations.
Without question the most successful example of this innovative world of open source is Android, which is now powering the fastest growing smart phones in the world today.
In education, the Kahn Academy, allows anyone to learn almost anything from arithmetic to physics, from finance to history, all for free. The days of carrying around our OHP slides close to our chests are long gone. Now we have SlideShare, which allows anyone to view any presentation whenever they want – and again it’s abundantly free.
Around the world people share their driving experience via Zipcars and their urban cycle commuting via Biksy, which was conceived in Amsterdam and perfected in Montreal. There is no longer a need to own your own car or bike, just share one.
Even in the area of risk analytics, or the practice of making better risk decisions open source has become an option through Opengama who offer free software to financial companies, allowing for more transparency into the complicated world of finance.
Crowdsourcing has become an accepted practice as people realize that each idea adds a small portion that combines into a greater result. Collaboration and sharing of ideas from any where in the world. It is no longer about sticking to the old ways of doing things but rather about open strategic thinking that involves new ways of working with partners outside of one’s organizations. It is about new ecosystems, new ideas, new processes, new products but most of all it is about a spirit of abundance.
* Ann spent 25 years in the advertising industry working on some of the biggest global and local brands in her role as CEO of Grey South Africa/President & CEO of Grey Canada. She now specializes in business relationships as the SA partner of Relationship Audits and Management, a global consultancy that measures and optimizes business relationships, in order to mitigate risk and facilitate growth. You can tweet her @annnuock or email via [email protected]
