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Businesses Books Media Book Reviews IT

Innovation Happens Elsewhere 131

Posted by samzenpus from the make-the-most-of-it dept.
Nochiel writes "What is open source and why should businesses care? Why is innovation important and why isn't our company innovative? Why does it seem like everyone else is innovating while we aren't? How can we leverage Open Source? How can we implement an Open Source business strategy?" Read on for Nochiel's review.
Innovation Happens Elsewhere: Open Source as Business Stratgy
author Ron Goldman and Richard P. Gabriel
pages 377
publisher Morgan Kaufmann Publishers
rating 8
reviewer Nicholas Ochiel
ISBN 1558608893
summary How to introduce open source into the enterprise as a viable and valuable business strategy.


This is a book about open source in the enterprise. It seeks to answer those questions and more. Finally, the Open Source Process has been codified in a manner that gives management the business perspective they have been yearning for.

Too often, Open Source come across as a religion. Ron Goldman and Richard Gabriel, through their sober treatment of the topic, successfully detail all the pragmatic aspects that a business should consider.

This book, to paraphrase the authors: ..is for anyone interested in a better understanding of open source--its larger history, its philosophy--, and its future prospects.

It is licensed under a Creative Commons License and is available at this link.

Chapter 1 presents the problem that the modern enterprise faces, namely: how to ensure high levels of innovation and productivity.

The reader is then introduced to the "innovation happens elsewhere" problem: High productivity requires doing less in order to produce more. This, in turn, necessitates being able to leverage other individuals'/companies' efforts. A company, therefore, has to recognize that there are more innovative forces outside the company than in it. By using these forces, a company can maintain a competitive edge. Open source is then presented as a solution to the problem.

The rest of the chapter opens the readers mind to the "new" new way of doing business., illustrates why open source is a viable business strategy and introduces the most important aspect of open source: community.

Chapter 2 discusses the "innovation happens elsewhere" dilemma in even more depth. The authors have a keen understanding on the power of the Commons and how it can make a difference.

In order to illustrate how the Commons can make a difference, the authors use the history of the Web as an example. They highlight the fact that it was built as a volunteer effort with no central planning and a small set of simple protocols. The growth of the internet then came primarily from volunteer efforts.

In this chapter, the authors successfully illustrate that a modern business can succeed only by leveraging the creativity of the Commons and engaging in conversations with a broad and dynamic set of participants in the given problem space.

Chapter 3 then tackles the most important question that managers ask: What is Open Source?

This chapter details the philosophical tenets of open source, the root of the zealotism as well as the history of open source. Many readers will find it interesting that, in the past, open source was the default methodology for leading software and scientific work!

Common myths and misconceptions are also addressed. The authors also provide an interesting comparison of the open source and agile methodologies showing how open source borrows from the strengths of the latter.

The secret sauce in open source is revealed and the various sections along the open source continuum are discussed. In particular, the authors address the value of gated communities and internal open source, a valuable discussion for those managers who wish to introduce open source into their company slowly or even extract value from only a subsection of the open source value chain.

This chapter is a complete description of the open source phenomena. As such, it can easily stand on it's own if one is looking for a quick primer.

Chapter 4 concerns itself with the business reason for adopting open source, how to develop an open source business strategy and how to create a business model that supports the open source strategy. Sun's NetBeans platform is used as a case study to illustrate the various aspects of an open source business.

This section gives possible reasons why you should open source your product as well as why you should use open source. This chapter is directed at the business strategist who wishes to understand how to implement an open source strategy and measure it's success.

Chapter 5 provides a discussion of the legal aspects of open source. It details the nature of a license, the structure of copyright, patents and types of licenses. It also covers multi-licensing, contributor agreements and licenses for documentation.

Chapter 6 concerns itself with the workings of the open source development process. An open source product is not so different from a proprietary one. It has versions, minor and major releases as well as a typical product life cycle.

The differences, where they do arise, are in the new infrastructure (and management of the same) as well as the additional responsibilities that developers are expected to take as they engage the community.

The authors also discuss joining an open source project. In particular, they emphasize that it is valuable to join an existing project if that project is already targeting the niche/functionality you wish to address with your project. This is important because it generates goodwill within the community.

Finally, open source within the company is discussed with case studies from IBM, HP and Sun.

Chapter 7 makes note of the fact that open source initiatives generally begin with middle management. As a result, middle managers encounter a number of challenges: The need to convince upper level management, get approval, acquire resources and set up the infrastructure.

This chapter provides valuable advice and strategies for individuals in this situation. (I wish I had read this chapter while at my previous employment. It would have saved me a tonne of grief.)

Chapter 8 assumes that the project is up and running. The mailing lists are functional and the public repositories are bursting with bleeding edge code. How, then, do we harvest the innovation that is happening elsewhere and build momentum?

After reading this chapter, the reader understands the value of marketing and community outreach. This is particularly valuable especially because it comes from two prominent members of the Sun community. (Sun, is the king of marketing. Their marketing efforts have made Java a household name and tool.)

Chapter 9 provides a summary of the gotcha's at various stages in the open source journey. At first, this chapter seemed superfluous as it repeats much of what has been said in previous chapters.

Upon review, however, the chapter becomes useful as a reference guide for managers as they tackle the problems that arise during implementation. The section on "recovering from mistakes" is particularly useful because a proprietary closed source company is typically used to hiding it's mistakes from customers and the world at large. The authors emphasize that it is important and valuable to fail in public especially if this failure is accompanied by an effective solution.

In Summary the title of this book is deceptive. I would have been better titled: Professional Open Source: A Manger's Guide. It is a lucid and accurate treatment of the topic.

The authors' concept of the commons is very interesting. It is one composed of things whose basic value is not diminished by making a copy. This, in my mind, is amazing! Does this mean that all projects should be open sourced? After all, software increases in value proportionally to the number of people to whom it's distributed.

The book also manages to dispel the myth of first mover advantage. In fact, first mover products rarely have the required quality to dominate the market. Perhaps this explains why open source products are rapidly eroding the market share of established applications. The proprietary stuff was a first mover relative to open source. It's quality was so bad that open source now presents a mature solution that actually works! (I can't help thinking about Zimbra in that regard)

Perhaps the most important message of the book is that there are smarter people in the world and they don't work for you! To paraphrase the authors:
Regardless of how smart, creative and innovative you believe your organization is, there are more smart, creative and innovative people outside your organization than inside. In addition, the majority of elsewhere doesn't particularly care to make products in your space.


This book should be at the bedside of any manager who is either delving into the open source world, wishes to understand what open source has to offer or seeks to clarify why open source as a business strategy will erode the market share of proprietary companies."
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Innovation Happens Elsewhere More

Innovation Happens Elsewhere

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  • Other than creating free software . . . (Score:5, Interesting)

    by EraserMouseMan ( 847479 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @03:31PM (#14311794)
    what are some examples of innovation in Open Source software? My coworker maintains that Open Source software only copies already existing ideas and makes the software/source code free. What would be some good examples of software/concepts that were born in Open Source software?

    • Re:Other than creating free software . . . (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mkw87 ( 860289 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @03:35PM (#14311832)
      Bittorrent?

      Besides just copying programs, what Open source will do a lot of times is provide the 'same' program but with more functions, a better interface, a SAFER program, or just the fact that its open source so that, if you are inclined to do so you could edit it to be just what you want.

      • Hey! That's a great example. And if BitTorrent was closed source and kept to one company I'm sure the RIAA would have shut that company down by now and nobody would have theh code then.

      • Re:Other than creating free software . . . (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        > Bittorrent?

        Based on the earlier, open-source, MojoNation. Similar to how apache was based on NCSA httpd, etc. The problem that many people in this discussion seem to be making is confusing invention with innovation. NCSA httpd and MojoNation were the inventive (new) ideas here, apache and Bittorrent were the systems that innovated these original ideas to create widely used applications.

        Hotmail was inventive back in the day, Gmail is innovative. The difference is subtle but important.
    • Why is the parent modded troll? He asked an honest question that a coworked posed and he hadn't been able to answer. Frankly, most open source applications do copy or imitate existing proprietary software. Or is someone going to suggest that Open Office is something completely new and exciting? I know there's some original open source applications out there, but I personally can't think of any off the top of my head.
    • And Larry Wall copied perl from where?

      Apache is a patch on some closed source product?

      ViolaWWW (which inspired the Mosaic web browser) started as a imitation of what?

      • Larry Wall copied Perl from existing languages like awk, sed, and sh. Apache copied (literally) the NCSA web server. Sure, these projects did not copy commercial, closed-source software, but that does not make Perl and Apache paragons of innovation.
        • While copying from open source programs instead of closed source programs does not as such make anything a paragon of innovation, perl and apache are both paragons of innovation both in themselves and through hosting so much innovation.

          Sam
        • Apache copied (literally) the NCSA web server. Sure, these projects did not copy commercial, closed-source software, but that does not make Perl and Apache paragons of innovation.

          Apache may not be a good example. The NCSA web server was basically open source. I don't recall the exact license, but the source was always available. As was the source to NCSA's web browser Mosaic. I'm fairly certain that Tim Berners-Lee original web software was open source as well. So while Apache may have copied from others, I
        • Perl is plainly a very innovative language, and has been for 20 years.

          Einstein's General Relativity was built on Newton's laws and Galilean Relativity, but that doesn't make it less innovative.
        • If all they did was copy them then there was no reason in the first place.
          If all they did was copy them then there would be NO difference in functionality.
          awk, sed, and sh can do EVERYTHING that perl can can't they? NO? Oh wait that must mean the programmer extended it with their own ideas. They liked some of the functionality those programs offered and decided to wright their own which contained all their favorite features from the three and added all others they wanted that those programs were lacking. Yo
        • Larry Wall copied Perl from existing languages like awk, sed, and sh. Apache copied (literally) the NCSA web server. Sure, these projects did not copy commercial, closed-source software, but that does not make Perl and Apache paragons of innovation.

          Well, I suppose GP should have used awk as an example then... I would like to know what will classify as innovation using this mindset of 'it is similar to something else, so no innovation'. By that measure, I suppose Engelbart had real innovation and everyo
    • jack-audio-connection-kit

      It's a low latency realtime audio sever layer that allows many different audio and midi programs to interface with audio hardware simultaneously. It is able to move system processes and even the kernel itself into the background so that the audio stuff doesn't lag or drop.

    • Internet (TCP, IP, DNS). WWW. Rsync. Etc. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dwheeler ( 321049 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @03:51PM (#14311966) Homepage Journal
      The Internet, as a practical matter, was developed as OSS. TCP, UDP, IP, and DNS were essentially OSS efforts. The World Wide Web was as well -- in particular, most servers have been OSS since its data's been available. "Rsync" is a clever way to keep files synchronized, widely used, and is OSS. Tcl, Perl, Python, and PHP essentially created the web "scripting languages" domain, all OSS. As with any story, it's all complicated; some of the early efforts were BSD-licensed, so proprietary versions started appearing later (obscuring the OSS origins). But anyone who thinks that OSS only copies pre-existing work is ignoring the evidence.
      • Bingo.

        Of the responses so far, dwheeler's is the only one that even comes close to answering the question asked.

        I'll elaborate a bit to add other "internet technologies"

        The first web browser - Tim Berners-Lee's GUI-based WorldWideWeb was open source.
        The first "famous" web browser was NCSA Mosaic that was also open source (at least in that it was distributed as source and user-contributed patches were accepted back into the NCSA-controlled mainline).

        Sendmail, the program that, even today, handles the majorit
        • I don't think that anyone is claiming that a proprietary license is a necessary ingredient for innovation. If you rephrase the question as what innovative software has been produced by the open-source / free software "movements", as opposed to academic work that has been retroactively claimed under the open-source umbrella, you're left with the bits and pieces others have mentioned: BitTorrent, ffmpeg, jack. Which is non-zero (although how "innovative" are ffmpeg and jack, really?) but looking back at the l
          • s opposed to academic work that has been retroactively claimed under the open-source umbrella,

            What makes "academic" work special enough to be singled out? People getting paid, either via salary or via education to create software that "scratches an itch."

            I don't think that anyone is claiming that a proprietary license is a necessary ingredient for innovation.

            In my experience, that is exactly what the original question usually means when it gets asked.
    • er, Freedom, my friend.
    • Chapter 3 of the book points to GE's Visualization ToolKit (VTK) [vtk.org] as something that is both opensource and agile. GE partially funds the VTK - a software system for 3D computer graphics, image processing, and visualization. While GE holds some patents on that are incorporated into VTK, there stance is "We don't sell VTK, we sell what we do with VTK."

      VTK has also spawned off two other opensource projects, DART [kitware.com] and Cmake [cmake.org].

    • Web browser (Score:4, Informative)

      by gr8_phk ( 621180 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @05:03PM (#14312531)
      Yes, the first web browser (Mosaic) was distributed as source. A friend of mine downloaded and compiled it at university. It ran on the X window system (ahem there's another). That was just before someone got his own domain and put his homepage at www.yahoo.com with a manually created index.

      I'd argue that big companies don't innovate. Individuals and small groups innovate - sometimes they release source code, others not. PKzip and Flight Simulator also come to mind. Autocad started as a very small team that formed a startup. I suspect there are lots of major commercial apps that are copies of something done outside the company, or started small and just grew. Please name one real innovation from MicroSoft - the largest software company in the world. And please do your homework before naming it so people don't have to show you the prior art.

      I'm not saying innovation is in open source here, just that it's generally not coming from big companies. Sometimes the little guy tries to make a buck instead of giving away new stuff.

    • I know about bart's CD, and it's great for what it is.

      But I don't know of anything like Knoppix in Windows-world.
    • web-calculus and the waterken server [sourceforge.net], Freenet, L4 microkernel, EROS microkernel (in fact, a great deal of computer science research is open source).
    • Other posters have given more than enough examples. I will add that there is a lot of imitation in software, both in the closed source world and the OSS world. This isn't always because someone is trying to play catch-up with a great innovation. It is also often related to (in the case of OSS appearing to play catch up) because there is a proprietary piece of software out there, that has become pretty critical to a business and the OSS community wants to be able to replace it for them (think exchange, wh
    • what are some examples of innovation in Open Source software?

      Democracy. Laws produced by an open process have been considered an improvement over arbitrary rule by divine right. For more than 200 years.

      Civil code, penal code, vehicle code, machine code... see a pattern ?

      AC

    • How about rsync ? Microsoft are now playing catch-up with their Distributed File System Replication [computerworld.com.au].
    • MS started by Bill gates doing what? Hey and Paul Allen (well, to be honest, it was about 3% Bill and and 97% Paul and another guy) built an open BASIC interpeter. In fact, I think that you can still find the code on line somewhere.
      IIRC, MS borrowed from an open basic compiler to get their own compiler working.
      Now, do you use MS's toy database? That is a derivitive of Foxbase, which was a clone of DBase, which WAS a DB from DOD or NSCA or somewhere. It was total public domain when DBase claimed it for the
      • The Gopher and WAIS information servers were only ever Open Source, as far as I know. I know of no commercial servers for either.
      • The first web server was from CERN and was also Open Source, but as the web was really just a refinement on Gopher and WAIS, it is arguable as to how much that was really innovation.
      • TeX and Metafont - the first markup languages for typesetting and font creation, respectively - were and are Open Source.
      • ReiserFS and Lustre - Novel high-performance filesystems that arguably have pred

  • Leverage (Score:3, Interesting)

    by iamlucky13 ( 795185 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @03:34PM (#14311824)
    This, in turn, necessitates being able to leverage other individuals'/companies' efforts.
    As long as we're going to continually use terms that don't really make any sense, would somebody finally come out and explain "leverage" in a business sense to me

    A lever is a simple tools consisting of a load, force, moment arm, and pivot or fulcrum. It multiplies force through a reduction in distance. So how then, is open source leveraging a given company, and what's the fulcrum in the metaphor? Or does this term continue to get used time and time again just because levers sound like something smart people use?

    • Re:Leverage (Score:3, Funny)

      by Pxtl ( 151020 )
      Idunno, when I hear the word "leverage" in business speak, I imagine a shoehorn. A shoehorn is pretty much a good example of a lever. From there, I imagine how a shoehorn is being used with the subject at hand. For example, we're going to leverage company "X"s solution in our next project. My translation is "we're going to shoehorn company "X's" product into our solution to solve problem Y that our product doesn't currently solve".

    • Re:Leverage (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      you said it yourself ..
      It multiplies force through a reduction in distance.

      company gains doing less work .. sounds like a lever to me :)

    • Re:Leverage (Score:2, Informative)

      by ch-chuck ( 9622 )
      from dictionary.com:

      leverage n.
      2. Positional advantage; power to act effectively: "started his... career with far more social leverage than his father had enjoyed" (Doris Kearns Goodwin).
      3. The use of credit or borrowed funds to improve one's speculative capacity and increase the rate of return from an investment, as in buying securities on margin.

      tr.v. leveraged, leveraging, leverages
      2. To improve or enhance: "It makes more sense to be abl

    • Someone in the PR field once commented on the over usage of the word 'leverage' in the tech world, and how much she disliked the word.

      In a financial sense someone is leveraged if they are utilizing debt, or derivatives for investment purposes. This will amplify the extent of losses or gains. See Investopedia's definiton [investopedia.com].

      In a technology sense I think of leverage as using something or someone to make it easier to reach a goal. This is analogous to using a lever to make it easier to lift something. Utili

    • So how then, is open source leveraging a given company, and what's the fulcrum in the metaphor? Or does this term continue to get used time and time again just because levers sound like something smart people use?
      "I can't help it. I'm a born lever-puller."

    • Re:Leverage (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Red Flayer ( 890720 )
      'To leverage' in finance terms means to borrow money that you will invest.

      'To leverage' in good business-speak means to use something to your advantage, depriving yourself of the normal use of that thing (i.e., borrowing from yourself, like leveraging Division A profits for Division B expenses to fund Div B later, greater profits).

      'To Leverage' in bad management-speak means to utilize something -- that is, to use it for advantage or pecuniary gain (as opposed to just using something).
    • Leverage is a noun. Some weirdoes have hijacked it and claimed it as a verb but it isnt.
      • Language is mutable, not fixed. If it were fixed, abominations like "my bad" would not have slipped into it. Tragically, we are stuck with some verbed nouns; whether you like it or not, leveraged is certainly here to stay. Where do you think verbs come from, anyway?
      • Yes, some weirdos 'hijacked' it decades, possibly even centuries ago.

        I don't know how you can complain about mutability of language, when you use the word 'hijacked' in a different-than-original meaning, mispelled 'weirdos,' and forgot your apostrophe in 'isn't.' Never mind the fact that contractions are a bastardization of language anyway...
    • Leverage, the way it is used here, comes from the financial world where you leverage in order to take on more risk. For example, lets say you owned 100 shares of MSFT. You could take a margin loan on that stock - and as long as it didn't go down - use the loan money to buy, say, 100 shares of Apple.

      So, by taking on more risk (you are now betting that both MSFT and Apple will go up), you can increase your returns substantially. Without this "leverage" you would only get the returns of the one investme
    • You state that a lever "multiplies force through a reduction in distance." In other words, the purpose of a lever is to give you an advantage in strength/power/units of work, while exerting little or no additional effort on your part.

      When a business leverages open source software, they are able to use proven tools (PostgreSQL, Apache, etc) as an underlying architecture to solve problems. A business' area of expertise may be writing desktop consumer tax applications, but they have no experience in writi
  • "Let's talk about the question of why people are wealthy. There is a myth that it's a function of enormous personal attributes... the individual wealth which is generated in this economy is, in my judgment, and I doubt that there is much that anyone could disagree with about this, is a function of the innovative businesses which are created as a result of federal research. But you understand that the people who benefit from that research get it free... It starts from this incredible research activity which is going on with federal money."

    -- Bill Gates Sr., 2003

  • Innovation is a buzzword (Score:3, Informative)

    by theCoder ( 23772 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @03:40PM (#14311881) Homepage Journal
    Personally, I think that innovation is overrated in the tech world. Sure, it's important, but how many of the products that you use on a daily basis are truly innovative in their own rights? And how many are simply other people's innovations put together in a nice package that works well? For every 1 innovative product, there are 100 others that aren't. And the 100 others will on the whole work better than the 1 innovative one.

    For example, how many people want to drive an innovative car? I prefer my car to use time tested technology. Not the latest "innovative" breaking system that may or may not work all the time.

    Now, don't take this to mean I don't like innovation. I do. But that shouldn't be the deciding factor for any product. Saying something is innovative says that it's new and untested. That may be great for some things, but for most things it's not. I like my non-innovative TCP/IP and non-innovative bash shell, thank you very much (to pick two things that haven't changed all that much over the years). And frankly, I like having consistency in the other applications I use, like word processors and web browsers.

    So I agree with the book, innovatition is not as important as a good overall product.
    • While I agree that "innovatition is not as important as a good overall product" - innovation is what has lead to most of the products we use everyday. You might not want to drive an "innovative" car, but the process for building your time-tested car has been improved greatly over the years by innovation. In fact, in order for your car to be time-tested it needed innovation to improve on safety and reliability.

      I see innovation as a philosophy for constant improvement and trying new approaches. Borrowing a

    • For example, how many people want to drive an innovative car? I prefer my car to use time tested technology.

      So you'd prefer to be driving an all-steel monster that gets 8 miles to the gallon, with no airbags, lap belts, and a steering column that will impale you through the chest in a head-on collision? More power to ya. While you're at it, change out your power locks and windows, drop some rack-and-pinion steering in there, and oh yeah, you already said you don't want anti-lock brakes.

      If lack of innov

      • No, I like innovation. Just not buying products that are just about a particular innovation (unless it's really good). I prefer products that take the best ideas from everyone else and mesh them into a nicely designed product. Though one could argue that's innovative, too. So maybe I can't escape!

    • I don't think that's a fair statement...

      "...how many of the products that you use on a daily basis are truly innovative in their own rights?"

      It's not so much how many *ARE* innovative, it's how many *WERE* innovative at the time they were introduced.

      There's a big long adoption curve between the Innovators and Technology enthusiats through the early adopters, before you get to everyday use by pragmatists (and longer, before you get through to the conservative back end).

      Pretty much *everything* you use on a d
      • I must have missed the part where I said that innovation was bad. Since I explicitly said that I like innovation. Just that innovation isn't the main driver in many of the products that I use every day. Sure, there's a little special innovation in each of them (usually in how the design is all put together), but most major stuff I let other people test before it's incorporated into the products I use. So, I know that there were innovations in the products that I use, but most of the products aren't inno
    • Not the latest "innovative" breaking system that may or may not work all the time.

      I'd venture to say that a breaking system probably won't work any of the time.
    • They call it the bleeding edge for a reason. :)

  • Mangering Open Source (Score:4, Funny)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @03:43PM (#14311903)
    In Summary the title of this book is deceptive. I would have been better titled: Professional Open Source: A Manger's Guide.

    I guess the barn animals can read this to find an open source of food.
  • Summaries should be more than questions.

    I'm just sayin'.

  • Most organizations I have been a part of have broken pieces of their anatomy striving for innovation - either physical prdouct or business process innovation. Whereas if they had just worked hard to improve what they were already doing by, say, 20%, so much additional money would have flowed in that eventually it would have created enough serendipity for an actual innovation to break out (read the Thorn/EMI CAT scanner case from HBS).

    But digging in and doing the hard, dirty work of improving actual operati
    • You're right. Many of the most successful organizations aren't explosively innovative, just subtly innovative. Wal-Mart, for example, is a great example of innovative business processes that simply tweaked existing processes. There's a lot more money and productivity that's just waiting to be grabbed in almost every organization; "low-hanging fruit" as it were, but you're right... it's simply not exciting to innovate, say, a billing system, or a production line.
  • "Leveraging innovation". C'mon. I'm a business person, and even I have no clue as to what "leveraging innovation" is supposed to mean. The only reason that I'd choose Open Source is if it improved my bottom line, in some way. I can't pay my bills with "innovation". I can't sell "innovation".

    This book sounds like a salesman trying to convince you that you really, really do need this product. If it's not blatently obvious why I need that product, then I generally don't need it. This sounds like a s
    • I realize that this post came off sounding harsh... I didn't intend for it to be argumentative. I just *hate* this kind of meaningless terminology. I don't have time for it. I guess the assumption by the author is that every business owner is just sitting around in an office, thinking about "innovation" and "leverage" (that one actually is useful, but in a completely different context), and "synergy" and other such nonsense. I own a business, and a sample of what I'm concerned about right now is: gettin
    • The only reason that I'd choose Open Source is if it improved my bottom line, in some way. I can't pay my bills with "innovation". I can't sell "innovation".

      Innovation lowers expenses and creates new products for resale. If you don't see how these are important to business, then you my friend, are probably better suited to something other than business.

      ~Rebecca
      • Innovation lowers expenses and creates new products for resale

        Not necessarily. It depends on if that is a useful innovation that can be applied to a business setting. I could have the most innovative paperweight on the planet, but that's entirely useless to me from a business standpoint. I could have the most innovative web server on the planet, but if it's expensive or difficult to use, then it's also useless to me from a business standpoint. Innovation for the sake of innovation is the goal of acad
        • So what you're saying is the reason you don't like innovation from a business standpoint is you expect your business to innovate in areas that it doesn't give a shit about (paperweights) and in ways that would work poorest with your needs (expensive, hard to use webservers)?

          ~Rebecca

    • Um... (Score:2)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 )

      I shouldn't need an entire fucking book (that I have to buy) trying to sell my on something that I really doubt that I need.

      You don't have to buy it. [dreamsongs.com] Happy? You, in particular, might want to start with Chapter 4. [dreamsongs.com]

      (This is not meant as an endorsement of this book, as I haven't read it, but come on, dude. If you don't RTFA at least RTF summary!)

    • I can't pay my bills with "innovation".

      No, you pay your bills with money. Innovation is the usual way to (A) make more money, and (B) spend less money.

      I can't sell "innovation".

      Sure you can! Every marketing dweeb knows the best way to boost sales is to slap a "New and Improved!" label on it. In many fields it's the only thing you actually *can* sell, to the point where enforced obsolescence is part and parcel of how the industry operates.

      If it's not blatently obvious why I need that product, th

  • Money (Score:2, Insightful)

    by larry_larry ( 669612 )

    What I want to know is how do organizations make money in the open source world? A service model seems the most obvious, but then again development services seem best suited for areas with cheap labour (i.e. China & India).

    Eventually, I could see IP and code as a sort of currently... perhaps that is where things are going. Even computer geeks need to eat and buy stuff from time to time though.

  • Microsoft has abused this term to the point it is utterly meaningless.

    lets find a new word to describe what this USED to describe.

    oh, thanks billg

  • Come again? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pmike_bauer ( 763028 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @04:11PM (#14312127)
    I fail to see how open source solves the problem where a business lacks innovation.

    Harvesting the innovation of others via open source is hardly beneficial innovative. This does not distinguish a company from anyone else. By the very definition of open source, everyone gets to benefit from this sort of "innovation", including my competitors. Where is the value added?

    The problem is not lack of innovation, but lack of innovation that is exclusive to my business. I can leverage open source. Fine. But innovation must then come from another quarter.

    • I fail to see how open source solves the problem where a business lacks innovation.

      It allows them to break out of their perhaps stodgey programming trend and allows other fans of the product to express their interests and add another perspective that wasn't there with the same old same old guys typing away at the code.

      Harvesting the innovation of others via open source is hardly beneficial innovative. This does not distinguish a company from anyone else. By the very definition of open source, everyon

    • Re:Come again? (Score:2, Informative)

      by larry_larry ( 669612 )

      Open source can lead to innovation. Consider the case where you want to create a new webapp and provide some sort of service to the world. Your value-add is your differentiated innovation. By using an open source webserver, XML parser and such you are able to innovate more quickly because you don't need to create your own webserver and XML parser. Instead you can begin creating your application by applying, integrating and extending open source tools that have been tested by many.

      The open source stuf

    • Re:Come again? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @04:38PM (#14312342) Homepage
      Harvesting the innovation of others via open source is hardly beneficial innovative. This does not distinguish a company from anyone else. By the very definition of open source, everyone gets to benefit from this sort of "innovation", including my competitors. Where is the value added?
      The key is to take advantage of open source for those areas of your company's IT needs that are non-differentiating. If it's going to give you competitive advantage, keep it in-house. If it's not, then why not open source it?

      Bruce Perens, [infoworld.com] are you reading this topic? Help me out here.

  • Is it just me or does every book reviewed on slashdot seem to receive a rating of "8"?

  • gahhhh - innovation! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by edmicman ( 830206 )
    "Why is innovation important and why isn't our company innovative? Why does it seem like everyone else is innovating while we aren't?"
    Slightly off topic, but comments like these from businesses drive me nuts. This is coming as I recently had to attend an "innovation" seminar that was "voluntary" but still mandated that I attend. While there, the majority of the people saw it as a waste of time, while management saw it as "encouraging" innovation in the company. I understand that as a business, a compan

    • Motivation also happens elsewhere (Score:4, Insightful)

      by queenb**ch ( 446380 ) on Wednesday December 21, 2005 @04:59PM (#14312501) Homepage Journal
      You know, it's kinda hard to be "innovative" when you get exactly bupkis out of it other than having your job outsourced to some country you can't even pronouce. It's also disheartening to do something that it is good for your employer only to discover that your staff gets cut so that that some honcho can get a 6 figure bonus for "saving money" by firing your guys. Worse yet, you have companies like TWA where the rank and file has not had a raise in 10 years. During that 10 year period, the employees have been asked to take 3 pay cuts. They're currently having a sick-out because they're being asked to take a 4th pay cut. To make everything really rosy, they just found out that one the executives that got let go has a $4 million dollar a year golden parachute for the next 5 years. They get pay cuts and he gets $20 million. In that kind of atmosphere, who even wants to "innovate" or do much of anything else for their employer?

      2 cents,

      Queen B
  • I know I haven't RTFB but from above it sounds like "here is a buzzword. other companies have buzzword which is helping them succeed. how can we use buzzword to profit?" Buzzword might as well be anything, just the latest popular scheme amongst management.
  • Why does it seem like everyone else is innovating while we aren't? How can we leverage Open Source? How can we implement an Open Source business strategy?"

    Yeah, I've got a jargon generator that can write that stuff too.

    "Leverage" is a dead giveaway on its own, but put "innovating" and "strategy" next to it and there's no way this piece of text passes the Turing Test!!
  • The book's introduction alone outlines the entire idea behind open source. Even though the book is focused as a buisness strategy, it spreads into other aspects of open source.
  • I wonder how the authors would have analyzed the current state of affairs with Nessus, a popular security scanner tool. So many Nessus frontends are being sold as products by their competitors that they have gone the other way and closed their source. They even took the time to poison the codebase in the last free version to make their competitors look like fools for simply repacking their software.

    I'm not trying to troll, but I'm just wondering about the cases where there are a multitude of other compani

  • Still is... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by FreakboyJones ( 893119 )
    Many readers will find it interesting that, in the past, open source was the default methodology for leading software and scientific work!

    It still is the default methodology in science.

  • Suit-speak, in it's vaguest, paradigm-impacted form, is actually not spoken by any of the successful leaders I've ever known. The Big Bosses always keep it simple: "Make money" instead of "maximize your income opportunity potential", "stay ahead" instead of "opportune progressive strides towards innovation", "hire people" instead of "expand the human resource base". No, but who's keeping Suit-speak alive? Middle-manager peons, and the snake charmers who market to them. It's all about filling the largest vol
  • Could it be that open source is forcing business to innovate ??

    Because if the business product isn't innovative
    people could be using open source product instead.

    No, I do not thing that open source don't innovate
    but I do thing that a business have more resources
    to promote there inventions.
    • Here's my take, based on my experience, working for firms ranging from small (5 employees) to big (>500,000).
      1. Small firms have few resources. In the US, estimates are that more than half new small businesses fail in the first 2 years.
      2. Successful small businesses innovate, but because of #1, lack the resources to fund say, a full-time development staff, or spend substantially on an open-source project.
      3. Successful small businesses grow ever larger, adding layers of management and bureaucracy, because
  • Let's just ask the official web economy bullshit generator about this, shall we?:

    http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html [dack.com]

    Ok, so first we have to scale real-time metrics in order to benchmark next-generation initiatives and architect synergistic platforms. If we then evolve B2B synergies and synergize vertical models together with our partners, we should be able to cultivate 24/7 channels. And, voila, we have achieved open source innovation leverage.
    Easy, isn't it?

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