Are you open for business?

OpenBusiness is a website dedicated to supporting entrepreneurship based on open principles and is not just about open source software. These folks have developed an Open Business Guide, in the form of a wiki, to discuss the specifics of operating an open business:

Open Source [software] was the first sector in which peer-based production led to quality products. However, innovative business models have started to appear in other economic sectors experimenting with open approaches. Now there are online record labels using Creative Commons licenses, Open Source film projects, peer funded music labels, p2p finance services and the list of innovations regarding information management in the widest sense almost endless.

The wiki gives a lot of practical advice on how to profit by being more open. It is in many ways a simpler and synthesiszed version of Yochai Benkler’s work, The Wealth of Networks, which I would recommend as THE major reference on the digital networked economy.

On a related note, Matt Asay reports the COO of Fotango quitting when he found out that his company was abandoning its open source business model; stating, “Open source is not a tactic. It is not a strategy. It is the only practical way of competing in this marketplace.”

Closed companies are still making money, and profits, in much the same way that buggy makers continued to sell their products after the internal combustion engine was produced – for now.

The old, closed model is doomed and openness is something that every company and non-profit organisation had better understand – soon.