Read a Googler’s view on open standards, open source, and open information – important because it’s Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President of Product Management. Extremely interesting in terms of strategy definition, open communication (and admitting that Google isn’t there yet):
There are two components to our definition of open: open technology and open information. Open technology includes open source, meaning we release and actively support code that helps grow the Internet, and open standards, meaning we adhere to accepted standards and, if none exist, work to create standards that improve the entire Internet (and not just benefit Google). Open information means that when we have information about users we use it to provide something that is valuable to them, we are transparent about what information we have about them, and we give them ultimate control over their information. These are the things we should be doing. In many cases we aren’t there, but I hope that with this note we can start working to close the gap between reality and aspiration.
Sure this dialog on openness may seem like the PR part of the “do no evil” message, but I believe them that it’s not a message alone but an approach to business.
Picture above by http://www.flickr.com/photos/paperstringcloth/ / CC BY-NC 2.0
As I was writing the blog, my personal experiences at IBM kept flashing through my mind, both our own near-death experience back in the early 1990s, and what we learned a few years later as we embraced the Internet and came up with the e-business market strategy, which played such a key role in helping to transform the business models and culture of the company. IT and media are clearly very different industries, but there are parallels from which perhaps we can learn.
Great case study and story – how IBM managed to renew and survive to thrive …
Funny how big Walt is sitting above it all, a bit god-like, showing the direction the way with fat red arrows 
I am not sure if I can make it then – but the mission sounds just right:
The motto for the next conference is Game Changers. Game Changers break rules and redefine business models. They are innovative and take risks, free from the burdens of mass marketing and mainstream. Companies that change the game bet on disruptive innovations to create new products and services, they don’t leave it at continuous improvement of the present.
Well, web-based tech is playing an important role here and I am all fans for tech induced game changes, yet I wonder if social innovators that tweak, rattle and change established societal “business models” fall under this mission too?
