The power of open models
HE BROKE OPEN A CLOSED SYSTEM IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION There’s never been a greater time to think about how you can access the world, and how it can benefit you. There are phenomenal opportunities around - Dorman Followwill.
It’s almost 20 years since ‘open source’ was coined to describe software that makes its source code available for anyone to modify and improve. Netscape had done exactly this, arguing if anyone, anywhere could work on and improve the software, it would become a better, more valuable product.
To many this still seems counter-intuitive. If your business has a valuable product, they’d argue, the last thing you want is to tell everybody how you make it.
However, Frost & Sullivan partner Dorman Followwill argues that we’re entering a world where more and more successful businesses will operate open business models, as it makes good business sense.
“This is exactly what Donald Trump did in the presidential election. Candidates have always used the media to talk to the public, but he decided to go direct. That’s taking an open model to something that is traditionally closed …” Businesses must consider how this kind of thinking might apply to them, Followwill argued.
“In the world of social media, smartphones, wearables and gamifaction, you have access to the entire world. This doesn’t just refer to the way you market products. You can actually leverage global resources to drive product development.”
Through technology, businesses have access to global ideas and skills, he said. Successful ones will use this to their advantage.
Followwill said today’s individual entrepreneur can be very different from traditional entrepreneurs. “In the past, they might have been sitting in their garage coming up with cool ideas. That was an entirely closed, proprietary environment. But the entrepreneur of today can be sitting in a loft in Cape Town and still have the world at their doorstep.”
This has significant implications for their offering. Using the internet they can test an idea, receive feedback, modify it, improve it, and find potential collaborators – at high speed and low cost.
Some may say entrepreneurs will lose competitive advantage by doing this, but they could also gain partners and scale in weeks that could otherwise take years. “I think we have to get beyond the fear of interaction and say that maybe through collective processes and democratising our approach, we can come up with products and services that are even better.”
There are already examples of how this approach has worked in really big business environments.
“Drug discovery is one of the most proprietary business processes known to man,” said Followwill. “… A drug company in the US posted some of its fundamental research data as open source online, and created a game system to encourage people to find the best way to analyse it.” A French mathematician figured out a way to analyse it and came up with interesting ideas. “Now, before we had this technology, how on earth would a drug company in the US connect with a French mathematician?”
To benefit, businesses must be prepared to be open in their approach and thinking.