Win a copy of the 10 Principles of Open Business

To mark the UK launch date of the 10 Principles of Open Business I have another batch of copies to give away.
Here's how you can get your hands on one:

1. Two will go at random to anyone who has retweeted the following by 1am GMT on January 28, 2014:

"RT this for a chance to win The 10 Principles of #OpenBusiness - http://amzn.to/1eyDweN"

Two winners will be selected at random and sent physical copies of the book - worth £19.99 each. To qualify the amazon link must be included in the tweet, and the user of the twitter handle must be demonstrably human (bots need not apply). Qualifying tweets must be shared by 1 am GMT on January 28, 2014.

2. One copy will go to the person who gives the best reason for getting a freebie by commenting on this post, below.
The catch here is that you have to commit to writing a review (creating a video one if you prefer) for your own social channels AND add a review to amazon. Naturally you are free to publish what ever you like, you just have to commit to doing a review, good, bad or indifferent.

3. The final copy in this batch will go to someone who is prepared to read it, then hand it on to someone else who they think will get value from it. 
Ideally you'll make that a condition of giving it to the person you pass it on to (as will they, and so on). Just drop me your details and postal address to the gmail address you'll find at the top of the desktop version of this blog.

The deadline for 2 and 3 is February 24, 2014.

Collaboration vs Competition

Competition is often touted as the powerhouse of successful growth. Beat the market or sink.
The battleground/adversarial approach has even worked successfully within companies. Successive Governments have tried unleashing it on the NHS.
There was little collaborative about the way emap operated in its fastest growing years for example. That publishing company (where I spent 20 years of my career) housed several motorcycle magazines within one building. All they shared (apart from healthy contempt for each other) was a desire to beat each other. Journalists on the same titles would fight against each other to claim the glory of the best stories.
If they had to share anything it was more likely to be with a foreign title from another company altogether.
Despite what the collaboration canon tells us, from Harvard Business Review to Wikinomics, it worked. Spectacularly. For many years emap's growth made it among the most admired companies on The FTSE.
And others have either adopted the model or arrived at it independently - promoting the cut-throat over the collaborator, the I over the team, keeping over sharing.
And they think it works.
But I wonder if they kid themselves?
Success is relative. They may be doing all right but could they do so much better by adopting a more collaborative approach - aggregating and distributing best practice rather than hoarding the tricks that allow some to win as others lose.
Could collaboration allow more to shine instead of the competitive approach which results in someone in the shade for every shining light?
I do think the no-share model has a place: where it is vital that the various parts of your company have distinct cultures and generate distinct outputs then there is potentially risk in sharing.
In our emap example, if the bike mags shared their exclusives, their contacts, their leads, their way of writing, their picture choices - well they'd have all shared the same character. And it was the differences which attracted readers, allowing them to label themselves through the choices they made.
So perhaps let that be your guide? Where you want to deliver a consistent outcome (if you are all part of one brand for example) collaborate internally. if you need to be different, compete internally.
But even then collaboration can help. It can help you shape the processes you can apply to reach very different and relevant outcomes. One best-practice process can result in very different outputs providing the inputs are different
And of course you can collaborate externally too.
Just make sure you don't end up collaborating with the same folk your competitors are...

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