trust

This should come as no surprise: Open source principles are great guidelines for conducting successful collaboration sessions. What wasn’t as obvious to me was that the different principles are more important in different collaboration situations. Imagine the concepts of trust, openness, transparency, and release early, release often as ingredients in a mix, controlled by a row of dials. The environment determines how much you need to 'dial up' or 'dial down' each characteristic. » Read more

So much of the leadership conversation centers around the question “how do I get more out of my people?”  I don’t think I’ve been at a conference or sat in on a conversation with business leaders where the subject—and that exact phrase—hasn’t come up.

Now, without a doubt, bringing forth the full ingenuity, initiative, energy, and passion of every person in the organization is one of the most urgent agenda items for leaders in every realm of endeavor. But when it comes to unleashing the best gifts of people, that mechanistic metaphor of extraction (“how do I get more out?”) and, more importantly, the approaches it engenders, quickly break down. » Read more

Over the years, I've had many people label me as a marketing guy just because I help build brands. I don't like being labelled, but I particularly don't like that marketing label. Why?

In my view, traditional marketing sets up an adversarial relationship, a battle of wills pitting seller vs. buyer.

The seller begins the relationship with a goal to convince the buyer to buy something. The buyer begins the relationship wary of believing what the seller is saying (often with good reason). It is an unhealthy connection that is doomed to fail most of the time. » Read more

It’s 2011. Everything we do, say, like, and click on is tracked and known to the higher gods of the inter-webs. At least that’s what my co-workers Ruth Suehle and Bascha Harris always remind me. And I get it. I do. But when I log into Facebook or my GMail account and see ads served up to me that reference current conversations with friends or target my recent searches on Amazon, I still get weirded out. Why is that? » Read more

After you vote, read some of the articles about Wikileaks from our contributors: » Read more

What a difference three years makes. It seems quaint now that in the 2008 NEJM there were concerns raised about the flow of health information onto the web. Back then there was but a faint trickle of what could be entered, mostly by hand, and accessed on the web. Before HITECH and health care reform, exchanging health data online seemed blasphemous to many hospitals, patients, and physicians alike.

Fast forward to today and where we are now: » Read more

Google Health is approaching its second birthday, and according to some, also near death. I can't help but speculate that if it is indeed shuffling off the digital coil, that its demise has something to do with a general unwillingness to hand over such sensitive information to a company that already knows so much about us as individuals. » Read more

It's true. If you think about the characteristics of open source and the qualities of a successful relationship, you will find a lot of overlap.

OPEN: You have to be open and flexible to make a relationship work. Going back to my favorite analogy in regards to open source software and proprietary software--proprietary software is like buying a car with the hood welded shut. Oh, you need to change to oil? Too bad. Buy a new car. If we aren't flexible and open to change--if our hoods are welded shut--it makes it extremely difficult to keep the (love) engine running.
» Read more