I had an early peek into a new ebook from the TED conference's books unit focused on transparency. Radical Openness: Four Principles for Unthinkable Success (TED Books, 2013) by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams is surprisingly packed full of cases in 66 ‘pages’ in this ebook and well worth a read if you want to understand the continuing changes to how we as a global society view the support we expect from the many entities we live around. I followed the prolific Mr. Tapscott's work on several occasions and was surprised how soon since his last release this new work came out.
This update on the state of the world since The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency will Revolutionize Business (Free Press, 2003) by Tapscott and David Ticoll, covers much more than just the business world because of the intertwined nature of business, governments and the public. We have always known this interplay but it becomes very visible when we consider a topic like transparency.
While the subject and case is well defined, when it comes to this topic, we also need a clear idea to whom the information is being transparent. For example, shareholders want transparency of business operations as do the communities that the business impacts; however, the interests of each can be divergent. More so, there are secondary impacts and implications of each of these.
With that in mind, I took the liberty to give a summary of many of the ideas across the ebook (see Table 1). You do really need to read the book to understand the story behind each case, because it tells the cross-relationships of these cases to the larger proposition of the book itself.
Table 1: Examples of Transparency, who and how it impacts
| Example | Primary Targets | Topic/ Content | Secondary Impact |
| WikiLeaks | Multi-Stakeholder Network (MSN) to Public | Government activities (broad range) | Increased Demonization or Criminalization of MSNs |
| CorpWatch | Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) to public | Corporate Malfeasance | Open APIs and organization data of corporate activities |
| Zappos | Company to Customers | Pricing, and Profit margins | Pressure on Competitors |
| Eli Lily (negative example) | Company to public | Public awareness | Corporate malfeasance through biased information |
| European Environmental Agency | Public Agency to {Public, NGOs, Researchers, Entrepreneurs} | Environmental quality data | [not stated] |
| Apple (negative example) | Partner (Foxconn) to Company | Labor practices | Improper labor practices impacted Apple’s overall brand image |
| Proctor & Gamble | Company to Entrepreneurs | External collaboration through collective intelligence | Increased product innovation rate, cost-avoidance (R&D) |
| Apple | Company to Customers | Software Partner product sales | Increased own product sales & brand competitiveness |
| Microsoft (negative example) | Company to Developers/Partners | Retaliation against Hackers/Tinkerers/ Makers of (Kinect) product use | Loss of innovation & market opportunities; negative brand image |
| GlaxoSmithKline | Company to {Researchers, Other Businesses, Entrepreneurs} | Scientific Research Data | Change in drug development processes; epidemiology research acceleration |
| IBM | Company to {Customers, Developers} | Open source Linux platform use | Cost-savings (IT, R&D), improved product portfolio |
| Arab Spring (as a whole) |
Individuals & Public to Government | Human rights violations, Corruption, Authoritarianism | Broad economic and political impact across the Middle-east region |
| Quebec Student protests | Students/Public to Government | Tuition fees | Unemployment situation; Confidence in the government / political stability |
| Company to Government | Corporate Espionage | Corporate investment transfer (Operations moved to Hong Kong) | |
| PatientsLikeMe | Public to Public | Medical information | Healthcare education moving away from healthcare organizations |
What is evident from many of these factors is that the Government and the Public can have dramatically different points of view on many matters. The cases here speak of the emergent topics where this is in conflict or controversy. However, there is a greater collection of value emergent from this.
Transparency is the enabling force here and the assumption is the result is accountability. I happen to think there is not one result from this but context-dependent variations that emerge from each. Accountability is the intermediary that leads to the real impact in each case.
What is not discussed within the scope of this book is risk management. That remains a concurrent business activity whenever addressing transparency. While I am no actuary I can guess that there is still not enough data to truly build risk profiles for each case.
Not enough companies are participating in these behaviors but what Radical Openness suggests is that there are significant benefits of adopting transparency as well as consequences of not doing so. If you work in corporate or even public sector strategy and innovation, I would put this book on your list to read in an afternoon, but put in practice over months.
