Open business

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Open business is in general the concept of doing business in a transparent way by intimately integrating an ecosystem of stake holders and abiding by a model of transparency. Often, small minorities harness the business benefits away at the cost of other stakeholders and `the market´. Open Business structures seek to rectify this. They activate personal productivity like no other organization can by simply redirecting the returns to those that produced them, and by their nature, the individuals themselves play a central role.

A more strict definition is inspired by free software movement, open standards, open source and open content, which implies that an open business, is a business whose business model is run on open standards, "free software"and "open source" software 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 shareheolders, 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 Ideas

Central to the concept 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

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 internet 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 based on that individuals competence level, hours worked and performance
• net profit is split between all members based on each individuals contribution to that profit

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 and management fills in the "gaps"
• 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.

See also

• Corporate transparency
• E-democracy
• Open source governance

External links

• Social Business
• Open-Business Model Refinement & Implementation
• 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.
• Open Business: An Introduction A broad overview of open business
• Negocios Abiertos: A project for sharing open business models in Spanish.

http://visionsummit.org/128.html?&L=1