Capping IT Off

My fellow blogger Rick Mans is absolutely right in his plead to please not block social tools. Some time before Rick also predicted that "Trust" will become the new "Control". With this post, I am piggy-backing on that very prediction. I say that "open" will be the new "closed", as we will see a definitve move away from the traditional, centralized, inside-out, controlled hub&spoke towards the de-central, outside-in, trust based and open mesh. I strongly believe that open communications between organizations will become crucial in the near future. Competition will become extremely tough and competing on price alone has already been stretched too far for most businesses. Now is the time to innovate and join forces with your suppliers. Think in terms of making life and business easier for your customers, because they will want and expect nothing less than individual and customized services. Dear businesses of this world: You are in that position. You can free your customer's energies by innovating. But in order to do so, you need to liberate yourself too. Open the gates and let the fresh air in. Invite your suppliers and ask them about their ideas. Innovate together. Share your ideas and you will share success, making you both stronger competitors in your areas. Indeed: openness to your allies. Think about it. Continuing the secrecy and closed approach towards innovation and creating new business is really difficult and requires a lot of investment that is often not fully returned. Look at the open source model (SUN's CTO Simon Phipps wrote an excellent article on open vs. closed source in 2002). The investment in creating a new innovative technology is shared between various parties, and what you sell to your customers is know-how, training and support. In other words: your customers can focus on their core business and needn't worry about the specifics of their business technology. Help your customers to thrive so you can thrive yourself. Capgemini believes this and shows this by inviting you to join the Mesh Community. Our doors are open!