Transforming Your Company with Open Source

Kartik Subbarao Open Systems Consultant kartiksubbarao.com [email_address] Transforming Your Company with Open Source

Organizational Transformation
Allows people to see things in fundamentally new ways
Enables people to solve problems and capitalize on opportunities that could not even be considered before
Driven by personal transformation

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Stephen Covey's Maturity Continuum

Open Source Can Develop Interdependent Capability
Provides experiential learning opportunities in day to day work that develop thinking and behavior
Is not a silver bullet and should not be used that way
Needs baseline skills, access to experts and sufficient freedom to experiment
Reference: http://kartiksubbarao.com/open-source-and-interdependent-it

Dependent IT
Example: customer of a proprietary vendor
Transactional relationship centered around licensing and support fees. Not much other influence over a vendor's product road map.
Even if money talks, if it's the only thing that can talk, the conversation becomes significantly constrained.
Risks falling into the money trap themselves, reducing their position to a zero sum game, competing for scarce internal funding
Vendor lock-in reinforces a dependency mindset

Independent IT
Example: open source consumer
Nothing stands in the way of their technical skills. Can troubleshoot, enhance, and customize as much as they want
No licensing fees, can run unlimited software instances. Especially valuable in cloud environments.
Can choose to contract where they have skill gaps, and can gauge the competence of those providers
Can make granular tradeoffs between buying, integrating and building

Interdependent IT
Example: open source contributor
Optimizes customization and standardization
Eye-opening experience when code is further enhanced by the community – they realize how much more they can accomplish through collaboration than they can on their own
Can bring to bear the capabilities of an entire ecosystem to solve their employer's problems
Gains a deeper understanding and appreciation for open architectures and standards
Experiments to determine where they want to participate in different roles: Customer, Peer, Leader

Four Dimensions of Companies People Technology Business Process Enabling Possibilities Creating/Designing Products and Services Invention and Innovation Productivity Tools Platforms Managing Realities Operations Quality Governance Organizational Structure Talent and Skills Organizational Knowledge and Wisdom Social Networks Communities of Practice Values and Ethics Assets, Liabilities and Equity Revenues and Costs Sales and Marketing Customer Value Strategy and Objectives

Interdependence: Incomplete Representation

Interdependence: Better Representation

Start With Two Dimensions
The first two suggest where the other two can go
Can pick any two dimensions, based on skill/role
Example: People and Technology

Interdependent Capability

Highest Common Vision vs Lowest Common Denominator
Pitting one dimension against the other leads to the lowest common denominator and win/lose
Interdependent awareness develops trust in areas outside one's expertise
Create space for others to speak confidently from their areas of strength, and confidently represent your own areas of strength
The highest common vision is a synthesis of interdependent thinking
Remember – you don't have to be good at everything

Carl Jung's Personality Theory
Source of Myers-Briggs types (e.g. ENTP, ISFP, INFJ, ESTJ, etc)
Complementary and orthogonal functions that mediate our experience with the world
Jung's development model – we develop a preferred function, then an auxiliary, then others, expanding our worldview over time
Intriguing parallels to the four dimensions of companies
Intuition (N) Thinking (T) Sensing (S) Feeling (F)

Employee and Company Brands
Successful open source contributors gain respect with fellow users/developers, which translates into leadership and influence
Their personal brands and their employer's brand increase both in value and in affinity with each other
Employees get public recognition for their efforts, and are simultaneously incented to continue to be affiliated with their employer's brand

Outside Innovation/Exonovation
Open source experts develop strong collaborative networks all over the world
They identify relationships with customers, partners and others that can be transformed from largely trasactional into ones of deeper mutual benefit
They develop insights into how social software works best, and can shape an effective social media strategy
References: http://outsideinnovation.blogs.com/ http://opensolutionsalliance.org/osa/osaalert%28apr09%29-tiemann.html http://kartiksubbarao.com/mental-models-of-commerce-and-community#visionary

Assessment (work in progress)
Developing a model (will be freely available)
Assess Current State, Capability, Environment for Openness across People, Process, Technology, Business, with attention to Interdependence
Low Capability and Low Environment => low potential
Low/High Capability and High/Low Environment => identify potential and develop it

Sample Question Areas
People
Vibrancy of internal communities of practice
Process
Scalability to complex and simple levels
Technology
Architectural integration of Open Standards
Business
Range of customer/partner value propositions

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Transforming Your Company with Open Source

by Kartik Subbarao on Sep 28, 2009

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