Open business represents a concept of doing business in a transparent

Transparency (humanities)

Transparency, as used in science, engineering, business, the humanities and in a social context more generally, implies openness, communication, and accountability. Transparency is operating in such a way that it is easy for others to see what actions are performed...

 way by intimately integrating an ecosystem of participants, collaborating in public space.

Open business structures make contributors and non-contributors visible such that the business benefits are distributed accordingly.

They activate personal engagement and productivity by benefiting the contributors and producers that they can live from it and helping the clients to reduce their costs.

Focused on transparent goods

The definition is inspired by open movements, open content principles, open tools and standards (free software movement

Free software movement

The free software movement is a social and political movement with the goal of ensuring software users' four basic freedoms: the freedom to run their software, to study and change their software, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. The alternative terms "software libre", "open...

, open content

Open content

Open content or OpenContent is a neologism coined by David Wiley in 1998 which describes a creative work that others can copy or modify. The term evokes open source, which is a related concept in software....

, free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

, open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

).

It mainly focuses on creating "open" products and/or services.

This approach claims to be for the benefit of all and not just for one group or stakeholders, whether shareholders, personnel, government etc.

The risk of bankruptcy of such open-movement businesses is reduced because the fruits of their work remain in the commons and therefore remain as a permanent base for recovering the open business, even in their most critical situations.

Focused on transparent services

An open business can put its focus on services, that are not restricted to open source or open content as e.g. a charity.

A charity that documents all transactions (donations and use of donated money) real-time on their websites in public, has an excellent chance to be more attractive to donors, especially if the name of the donors in social networks (as real names, Twitter-, Facebook- or other branded Online Ids) are made public too. So in this case even the donors participate in the charity as business and beyond by increasing their positive community karma (earning "whuffie

Whuffie

Whuffie is the ephemeral, reputation-based currency of Cory Doctorow's science fiction novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. This book describes a post-scarcity economy: All the necessities of life are free for the taking...

s") and building their reputation.

The risk of bankruptcy of such transaction oriented businesses is reduced due to the fact, that

• they earn an increased trust by disclosing the cash flow to the public
• get more support by "vested" visible supporters

Main ideas

Central to the concept are:

• Open learning/sharing — a fundamental tenet is open collaboration at all levels in all locations
• Open participation — open invitation to join the organization (similar to SourceForge, Blender community, where individual/team input within the community framework [for special services, consulting, training, adaptions, courses, camps, symposiums, books] can help to build individual income)
• 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

Knowledge

• All knowledge and information is free and open between members (but also to the public at large via membership)
• Knowledge and information gets converted continuously from any location into a ubiquitously accessible form (via Internet Browser), converted from
  • physical documents,
  • individually held electronic documents,
  • closed databases, etc.
• Knowledge is built and cared for by the participants of the Open Business
• Knowledge becomes available in statu nascendi, i.e. just when created, not as a secondary reprocessing afterthought (Co-Creating in public a book on Wikinomics
  Wikinomics
  Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything is a book by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, first published in December 2006. It explores how some companies in the early 21st century have used mass collaboration and open-source technology, such as wikis, to be successful...
  
   http://www.socialtext.net/wikinomics/index.cgi?wikinomics)

Financials

• Individual pay/income is based on individual social and professional competence, hours worked, performance
• Net profit is split between members, depending on their transparent individual contributions

Business means the state of being busy.The concept of business includes all the activities of earning money.

Management

• Management is just another (moderating and facilitating) role to optimize group processes (as primus inter pares, taking into account the varying individual skills and competencies)
• Decisions rise from a continuous Open Process by consensus building and voting, available to all involved members
• Management roles in projects are rotating (they come from the initiative of appropriate persons, who are selected and approved by the project members)

Members

The degree of freedom to participate may vary:

• Any person may be a member, regardless of their races, sex, religion or political persuasion
  • either with the approval of the majority of members or
  • simply by an online registration process (with certifying Identity to avoid Identity-theft, like Paypal does it, or Twitter does it now in a beta project)

• the degree of participation depends on social and professional competence and on self regulating transparent business rules, constantly developed and cared for by the whole business community.

• the members may determine more or less their working time and location
  • from a rigid: 8-18 Monday to Friday as the expected working availability time
  • to a self-determined, synchronized or more a-synchronic schedule as need be (to give more space to individual preferences [creativity, qualification, family, community life, political engagement etc.]).

See also

• Corporate transparency
  Corporate transparency
  Corporate transparency is set of information, privacy, and business policies to improve corporate decisionmaking and operations openness to employees, stakeholders, shareholders and the general public. Standard & Poor's has included a definition of corporate transparency in its aimed at analysis...
  
  
• E-democracy
  E-democracy
  E-democracy refers to the use of information technologies and communication technologies and strategies in political and governance processes...
  
  
• Open source governance
  Open source governance
  Open-source governance is a political philosophy which advocates the application of the philosophies of the open-source and open-content movements to democratic principles in order to enable any interested citizen to add to the creation of policy, as with a wiki document. Legislation is...
  
  
• Business models for open source software
  Business models for open source software
  There are several different types of business models for making profit using open source software .- Introduction :Open source software can be sold and used commercially. It is a part of the software industry. The financial return on open source software can also come from selling services, such...
  
  

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.
• Negocios Abiertos: A project for sharing open business models in Spanish.
• Business models for Open Hardware