Business

Encouraging organizations to change: The influence model

Scott Keller contributed to this article.

You know your organization needs to change. You've developed a strategic view about where you need to go and you've matched that up with an understanding of the changes that will require in your culture. You've thought very hard about organizational mindsets and personal behaviors that will need to shift to get there. Now, you actually have to do something to shift them. » Read more

1 CommentPosted 8 Nov 2011 by Colin Price

Four ways open source principles can improve your business

More than ever, companies are embracing the principles of open source to make major improvements, both internally and externally. Openness, transparency, democratization, and collaboration can be used to make your business a better place to work and create a better culture. » Read more

6 CommentsPosted 4 Nov 2011 by Chris Moody

Open for Business: Employees with benefits

Paul Graham coined the term 'ramen profitable' to describe the sort of start-up companies that can quickly reach profitability because they have low overhead and few expenses. I think of OpenNMS as 'sushi profitable'--that is, profitable enough to provide a few of the finer things in life. Like employee benefits. » Read more

0 CommentsPosted 2 Nov 2011 by Tarus Balog

Marketing openness: Does sharing have a stigma?

Monica Potts has an interesting piece at The American Prospect about selling openness and the idea of sharing. » Read more

1 CommentPosted 1 Nov 2011 by Colin Dodd (Red Hat)

10 ways to craft a career that will stand the test of time

What does it take to craft a career that is likely to stand the test of time? In my new book The Shift: the future of work is already here, I talk a great deal about the five forces that will shape work and careers: » Read more

0 CommentsPosted 28 Oct 2011 by Lynda Gratton

The cure for corporate inertia

We all know that big, established companies struggle to respond to "disruptive" change. Blockbuster, HMV, Nokia, and Yahoo! are all current examples of companies that are struggling with this problem--they are trying to adapt, but are being held back by powerful and often invisible inertial forces.

A recent example of corporate inertia really struck home, and got me thinking about the key role management processes play in preventing change. » Read more

2 CommentsPosted 25 Oct 2011 by Julian Birkinshaw

What makes Apple Apple

The following is an excerpt from Gary Hamel's forthcoming book, What Matters Now, to be published in December 2011 by Jossey-Bass Business.

In 1997 I bought an e-tablet from A.T. Cross, the pen company. Codeveloped with IBM, the CrossPad was hailed as a breakthrough product that would open up a whole new category--portable digital notepads. I'm a copious notetaker, so the idea of turning my scribblings into digital files was too good to ignore. » Read more

11 CommentsPosted 24 Oct 2011 by Gary Hamel

Open source: The antidote for "too big to fail"

If you look at the evolution of the IT landscape over the past 30 years, you see two distinct trends: the continued growth of the IT dinosaurs (mainframe computing and mainframe wannabes like Sun) and the emergence of highly modular, adaptable systems, which, by their very process of evolution, not only best suit the current needs, but plant the seeds for the next computer revolution. In the 1980s, modular UNIX systems sowed the seeds for Linux, which in the 1990s sowed the seeds for the rapid spread and adoption of the World Wide Web, which in the 2000s, sowed the seeds for companies like Amazon.com, Google, Facebook, and Twitter to aggregate and disseminate content as never before. » Read more

4 CommentsPosted 20 Oct 2011 by Michael Tiemann (Red Hat)

Want to change your company? Go viral

Scott Keller contributed to this article.

You've begun to make major changes at your company. Maybe you've decided to restructure your business to reach new markets or perhaps you're cutting costs in response to a crisis. » Read more

0 CommentsPosted 19 Oct 2011 by Colin Price

The importance of Google Dart

Google is making its Dart system open source.

This is very important, not just for open source.

Dart is a structured language for web programming. That means you can actually build a website as you would write a little Javascript. In fact, Dart can be run on a Java Virtual Machine, or compiled into Javascript. » Read more

7 CommentsPosted 17 Oct 2011 by Dana Blankenhorn