There are two ways of holding an idea. One is with a closed fist, and one is with an open palm.
When you hold an idea in a closed fist, you control it. It is yours. And no one else can access it. Ideas held tightly — as if in a fist — can’t be seen. Sure, if you try really hard, you might be able to see the little bits between the cracks. But they’re hard to see, share — or steal.But an idea held in an open hand can evolve. It has space to grow bigger. Ideas are actually organic, living things. If they have room to expand, they can quite possibly spread, and be picked up by others and grow into something much, much bigger than what you imagined.
What I’m talking about is more broadly is openness, which changes everything when used. Openness is a stance — to share with, to collaborate, to distribute power to many.
Some would argue — myself amongst them — that openness is the ethos of the era we live in today: the Social Era. Instead of competing through overpowering strength and scale by yourself, you create value in communities and by sharing power with one another.
It can be seen today on a societal, organizational, and personal level.
On the world stage, we saw the Arab Spring. Many voices advocated for freedom, effecting the change of oppressive regimes, and thus advanced the condition of their country.
We see it in organizations when we see global brands like TED decide to open up with TEDx. What was once limited to a few thousand people and two events has grown to be over 3000 events of people caring about ideas that matter — to them, in places as far away as Kibera (a slum in Nairobi Kenya), and as close as London.
And at the individual level, we see it when people work together to collectively solve problems that are relevant to all of them individually. For example, online forums allow anyone, everyone to contribute to solving problems. One such game is Fold It, which helps scientists advance their field by knowing how a protein should fold. A woman, an admin who has no bio science background, ends up being the best protein folder in the world. This is something that wouldn’t have happened if she had to first be picked, or vetted or in any other way been “allowed” to participate.
But many — perhaps you — suggest that open is just a phase and philosophy of the young, naïve, and unaware… something that people will grow out of when they accumulate power or want to be rich.
And perhaps this is human nature. Anytime we give birth to anything — kids, companies, ideas — the natural instinct is to hold that thing close, to protect it from the big, scary world and the bad things in it. This is understandable, especially with kids. But beyond the emotional desire to protect, should we apply this notion to companies and ideas?
In the Industrial Era, both money and power came from being bigger than the other guy, defending one’s turf, and keeping everyone out of your ecosystem. That’s why the icon of “success” is the 800-pound gorilla. The person who owned the machine was the person who created capital wealth. The person who set the rules had an inside track to stay in power. And, protecting IP in a closed system has allowed many a company to keep its edge. It used to be possible to erect barriers to entry from competitors and to establish entirely new markets that could be all yours. And that’s the key; it used to work when the rules of the Industrial Era were in place.
Not so much in the Social Era. In the Social Era, seemingly disparate individuals gather together and can form a powerful tribe that can do things that once only centralized organizations could do. This fundamentally changes the rules of competitiveness.
