Demand openness now

April 17th, 2008  |  Published in business  |  2 Comments

I started reading Fast Company recently and in this month’s issue there was a pretty interesting quotation in an article about Patagonia exploring how green their products are:

Dumain concludes that the benefits of openness outweigh the costs, because the company wants to spur others to action: “Our influence is larger than our impact. If we’re willing to share that information, it becomes exponential.”

That’s a pretty powerful idea, especially when it’s applied across the business and not just to a company’s green activities.  It’s too bad more companies don’t believe in this; sharing information and being more transparent can not only increase your influence, it can also help turn customers into evangelists for your company and products.

Responses

  1. Todd Deshane says:

    April 17th, 2008 at 3:55 pm (#)

    Hey Kyle,

    Although not completely related to your post, it reminds me of a blog post from Sean Dague from IBM regarding anti-markets:

    http://dague.net/2008/04/02/beware-the-anti-market/

    Thought you might find it interesting…

  2. kyle says:

    April 17th, 2008 at 7:57 pm (#)

    I see why you made the connection. Sean’s point is pretty good, and I also thought your mention of VMware as an anti-market is also dead on.

    Perhaps if VMware was more open and people knew the cool things we were working on (and why some things are the way they are) the anti-market may not have developed.

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