Open business

Open Business refers to the concept of carrying on a business "as usual", however, doing so as a transparent meritocracy based on individual performance. The concept is based on, and is a natural and essential extension of, the "open source" concept coined by David G.V. Ray and its definition is constantly being refined across the net.

The Issue

What is so "transparent" about it? Essentially, the way:

• each individuals role and development are emphasized,
• decisions are made,
• financial information is distributed internally and
• how profits are shared.

Typical businesses, often run using a "company" structure, have three broad groups of direct participants and a host of so called "stakeholders" who have and a less direct interest (e.g. governments, religions, family members, local community, etc). The direct participants typically include the following groups:

a) the people who do the work (i.e. the employees),

b) the people who provide and own the resources that a) uses (i.e. the investors) and

those that lie in between, i.e. :

c) the people who try to optimize the profit from the combination of a) and b) for the benefit of the b)investors (i.e. the investors agents known as "management").

And therein lies the issue. Its obvious that a conflict of interest typically exists between a) and b)+ c) i.e. the "us" and "them" syndrome. What one gets, the other one doesn't.

More importantly it leads to lost productivity via the development of dysfunctional behaviour such as:

• an exponential increase in politics
• dysfunctional "decision maker" selection processes
• the development of a knowledge "habouring" or withholding culture as a means of job protection
• a gradual brain drain due to staff turnover or retirement (i.e. long term knowledge loss)

Open Business structures are designed to optimize business productivity by removing barriers such as this.

They activate personal productivity, like no other organization can, by redirecting the profits to those that produced them regardless of which group they stem from i.e. effectively recognizing that all three groups as equally essential elements for business success and distributing the net profits based on direct contribution to that profit in any given period i.e. and not simply to the group b) investors with a smattering going to group c) if they managed to "squeeze" group a) hard enough during any given period.

A converging definition inspired by open standards, open source and open content implies that an open business, is a business whose business model is run on open standards, open source and open content principles, and focuses on creating `open´ products and services. This approach would guarantee that the business is run for the benefit of all, and not just for one group or stakeholders, whether shareholders, personnel, government etc. Also the strict application of open principles will guarantee that bankruptcy of a specific open business, will not result in the loss of the fruits of its knowledge.

Main Features

Central to the concepts implementation are:

• open learning/sharing - a fundamental tenet is open collaboration within the organization (i.e. not to non-members) at all levels in all locations e.g. groupware
• individual rights - each person is supported and encouraged to identify and optimise their personal development i.e. technical, personal, spiritual, etc.
• community focus - productivity activities are seen as part of a range of normal human activities e.g. family life, community life, religious commitments, etc.
• institution free - the organization is not based on any existing institution - state, religious or otherwise. Members can hold whatever views or affiliations they like.
• open knowledge - the free exchange of knowledge by making use -as much as possible- of open standards, open source and open content principles.
• open member details - including open access to the contact details of all other members in a convenient form (i.e. once the range and depth of those details have been approved for release by that particular member)
• open financials - all accounting information, including the compensation of others, is made available internally
• profit distribution - based on contribution

Details

Knowledge

• all knowledge and information is free and open between members(i.e. not to the public at large)
• knowledge and information is to be continuously converted into a ubiquitously accessible form from any location e.g. converted from physical documents, individually held electronic documents, closed databases, etc. to inernet browser accessible form
• "way of doing things" incorporates knowledge capture and dissemination at inception i.e. not as a secondary reprocessing afterthought

Financials

• individual pay/income is calculated as usual i.e. based on that individuals competence level, hours worked, performance and industry rate
• net profit is split between all members based on each individuals contribution to that profit based on the metrics and opinions of the members as a whole

Management

• management is predominantly a support and not a controlling function (i.e. where the assumption is that the individual is typically more specialised and competent in their domain than management is)
• all major decisions are made available to members in a continuously active, dynamic and ongoing voting system i.e. members participate on those topics that are of interest and relevance, management fills in the "gaps" by forming decisions that are not "of interest" to the majority of members e.g. routine administrative decisions or issues where members opinions were sought via voting but no clear decision resulted.
• leadership/management roles are rotating and not fixed (i.e. they are based on the specific project at hand and voted on by the team that volunteers to support that project)

Members

• any person may be a member regardless of their races, sex, religion or political persuasion with the approval of the majority of members
• the majority of members have the right to remove any existing member e.g. a member seeks to gain a direct personal gain at the expense of the Open Business organization, a member is found to be psychologically impaired, etc.
• family, community life is considered of greater importance than business activities. 8-18 Monday to Friday is the expected working availability time. No others as a norm.

Project Management(PM)

• uses all existing available PM standards and methods as appropriately applied to the specific project at hand e.g. standards such as those espoused under Prince2, PMBOK, Six Sigma (Black Belt), etc. and same methods Agile, etc., however,
• although all of the same "constraints" and "resources" are managed as usual there is more emphasis placed on the Project Management as a supporting function
• project participants "volunteer" themselves for specific projects (i.e. as opposed to be "nominated" by more senior management) and
• the actual Project Manager role is continually re-assigned on a meritocratic, per project basis i.e. based on merit according to the opinions of the team members within that particular project during its formation stages (or later if in the opinion of the majority they need to be replaced)

See also

• Corporate transparency
• E-democracy
• Open source governance

External links

• Open Business Model (the concept)
• What Business can Learn from Open Source
• Open, but not as usual
• Open Source Software and Open Content As Models for eBusiness
• Open Business Models WikiHive: A project offshoot from Community Wiki and BarCampBank.
• The Open Business Foundation: A project that opens business practices and applies open business models to daily business operations.
• OpenBusiness: A platform for sharing open business models.