Showing posts with label FT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FT. Show all posts

Sunday, March 09, 2014

The 10 Principles of Open Business in the press

Open Capital in the FT on March 11 - with a plug for The 10 Principles
In the interests of collating and curating the press coverage of The 10 Principles of Open Business as it emerges... 

LATEST ADDITIONS AT THE TOP:

June 2014
The Guardian publishes my article on Open Business and its role in sustainable business. (June 5)

I'm interviewed on the subject of crowd-funding (Open Capital) for the June issue of the BA inflight magazine Business Life - online version here

Subscribers to ADMAP magazine's June issue receive a three-page article on each of the 10 Principles of Open Business - and there's a front page mention, too. I'm afraid ADMAP don't allow sharing of their articles.

May 27 2014:
Forbes Magazine includes quotes from and references to The 10 Principles of Open Business in its piece on attempts to rebuild trust in big business: People Don't Trust Leaders Who Say: Trust Me

The Chief Learning Officer at global PR business Ketchum wrote an article/review on The 10 Principles of Open Business for the Ketchum blog on April 8 (2014).

In his post The Purpose Driven Organization - Moving from Talk to Walk Robert Burnside concludes: "I highly recommend you check out the thinking in this book. It's ahead of the curve and a useful glimpse into the future."

B2B Marketing Magazine published a review of the 10 Principles of Open Business in its April 2014 issue.

Written by Harris Interactive's UK Head of Marketing Ian Smith, the review concludes: "The book will get you thinking about ways in which you can apply the open business ethos to benefit your business, direct stakeholders and society in general. Open business is our present and our future. You can't afford to ignore that, or this book - 'Open up, and win!'

Cambridge Business Magazine published a three-page interview with me about The 10 Principles of Open Business in its April 2014 issue. You can view an e-magazine version here. The article starts on p58. It's flash so no use for apple devices I'm afraid.

Intelligent HQ ran a a lengthy and positive piece on March 24, 2014 concluding The 10 Principles of Open Business is an important new book which can benefit society as a whole...

The Huffington Post ran an article on March 13 (2014) featuring The 10 Principles and concluding that Open Business is an idea whose time has come:

Extract: "We seem to have a rare convergence between demands from the marketplace, driven by the real-time collaborative Internet culture, and a desire by entrepreneurs to define success as something more than making money. I think it's really happening, and it's time to take a reality check on your own business, and your own shopping habits, to capitalize on this trend." (writer Marty Zwilling - on twitter as @startuppro)

And on Tuesday (March 11, 2014) Financial Times readers found a reference or two in a column about crowd funding by Andrew Hill (it will be online the evening before). What was particularly gratifying about the FT column was its emphasis on Open Capital over crowdfunding - in line with the book and its principles.


Here's a link to the result of an interview conducted with me about Open Business by The Irish Times.

Extract: "Openness is not just a nice to have corporate social responsibility virtue but is a vital element in 21st century organisations. While born-digital ventures, for example, instructively know this, all organisations need to move to this model quickly if they are to survive in the networked age."
For the full article (as it also appeared in print on February 24, 2012) go here.

Brand Republic ran the press release about the book pretty much as is on February 3, 2014 (read it here) as did another magazine in their group - which I've lost track of, sorry.

The Cambridge Evening News' Business Magazine ran an article on The 10 Principles in its latest issue - March 2014 (give them your email for a free e-edition here) . 

And, for the record... .SO magazine ran a double page spread in their autumn issue of 2013. Find that online here.

Other stuff in the pipeline includes an indepth article in the April issue of Admap and an article on the theme of sustainability through Open for The Guardian.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Ditch the customer if you want to transform business

At FT Innovate in Londom this week much of the conversation was about the role of social media in innovation.
Martha Lane Fox advocated business leaders get themselves involved in social media in her keynote.
But it was clear that for most the best this means is the opportunity to get an ever-better understanding of the customer.
Which sounds on the face of it a very excellent thing - a step up from social as 'earned media' or attempting to use people as your choice of broadcast channel.
But there's something missing. And the missing bit is one of the three quick indicators of the difference between what gets referred to as 'social business' and what I urge you to consider instead, Open Business.
Open Businesses are purpose-led platform-thinking organisations. They use their available resources to discover people who care about the same things the org does, bringing them together to surface their concerns and working with them to support them in resolving those concerns. It means outcomes which are a better fit with the real needs of those for whom they are intended.
There's little wrong with social business and much that is good. But it rarely inspires business leaders. In fact I know a very senior business journalist who has never even heard the term.
And when I was invited in to IBM to talk about Social Business in London last week I made the point that few CEOs will feel comfortable with turning their business into a social one. The term creates unhelpful mental blocks. IBM folk reported similar concerns.
Why make life more difficult when what we all want is change for the better?
So what's the difference between Social and Open Business?
Here's three distinctions I see:

1. It's not about the tools - it is about Behaviours:
Often social business conversations focus on implementing software. Open Business urges you to think Behaviours first. What are people doing, what can and will they do? If you are starting with tools you'll likely starting in the wrong place.

2. Think less about messages and more about products. Open Business urges you to consider ways of making things with the people for whom they are intended; for the best possible fit with real need; for efficiency; for results people care about. Messages are an outcome of this process - not its purpose. Talk 'social' and all roads will lead you back to messages.

3. Ditch the customer.
No, really. Stop thinking about customers. Customers are people you intend to do things to. Open Business urges you to think about the long-suffering customer as partners to work with instead. It pushes those people deep into the production process - right to the start, to join with and be supported by the org in delivering the things all parties want - all partners want.

Tools/Behaviours
Messages/Products
Customers/Partners

There are differences: Critical ones in transforming how business is done.


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The rate of change is so rapid it's difficult for one person to keep up to speed. Let's pool our thoughts, share our reactions and, who knows, even reach some shared conclusions worth arriving at?