[Fsuk-manchester] [Fwd: [ukriders] The Open 100]

[Richard Smedley]

Interesting. fyi...

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        [ukriders] The Open 100
Date:   Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:10:12 +0000
From:   Nathan Miller
To:     <address@hidden>



The Open 100 competition allows you to nominate your top open
companies/organizations/platforms in the world, celebrating the power of
openness and mass collaboration. The competition was born out of the
UK’s National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA)
search for the world’s top 100 open innovation organizations. Now it is
being opened up to you to find who the world’s best open innovators
really are. You can nominate those companies you think are the best
deserving to appear on the list of the best and most interesting open
businesses at http://www.openbusiness.cc/category/directory/.

You might wonder what we actually mean what we mean by open
organizations? While there is no clear-cut definition of ‘openness’
there is undeniably a trend to democratize and de-centralize previously
closed business processes as the lines between consumers and producers
blur. Increasingly companies are opening up their innovation and
production processes. Some are formed from the start around communities
as with Face, while others are opening up their intellectual property to
share with others. This promises better, faster and more efficient
innovation.


Roland Harwood of NESTA responded to the idea that open innovation is
bandied around as a phrase too much, suggesting that the techniques will
eventually just drop the word ‘open’ as it becomes more the norm. “It’s
over-hyped and has been used and misused but the trends that underpin it
are only going to increase. Open innovation is being prioritized at a
senior level in organizations. Leaders like its promise of creating
value quicker, cheaper, faster,” said Harwood to Businessweek
<http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/next/archives/2009/12/introducing_the.html>.
“But it’s the middle managers and heads of departments who have the
responsibility for implementing this. They’re struggling for the right
processes and business models and they don’t know where to start. That’s
where the gap is. The strategic argument has been won; now it’s a
pragmatic challenge.” The practice is always so much more difficult than
the theory.


Nominated companies for ‘The Open 100’ can fall into the following
categories:


Open Innovation│ Crowdsourcing │ Co-creation │ Open Source Software
│Open Hardware│ Open Business (includes web 2.0)


And they will need to do some of the following…


∟ innovate products or services through communities


∟ share information for free using alternative ‘open copyright models’


∟ give substantial parts of a product or service away for free


∟ operate organizationally like open source software production, but
translate the model to services


∟ lowering the costs of market entry by providing tools or services,
that ‘open’ up traditional business boundaries


Public nomination will close on the 19th of March and the panel of
judges will then choose the winner from each category. The panel of
judges includes: Vic Keegan (technology correspondent Guardian), Marc
Surman (director Mozilla Foundation), Roland Harwood (director Open
Innovation at NESTA), David Simoes-Brown (head of Corporate Open
Innovation at NESTA) and Andrew Gaule (found of the H-I Network and
leader of the Network for Innovation and Strategic Growth). Th e winners
will be announced on the 8th of April at the ‘Open 4 Business’
conference at NESTA and at openbusiness.cc
<http://www.openbusiness.cc/>. The winners will have the privilege of
being published through NESTA and The Guardian Open Platform in the
ultimate collection of open organizations; ‘The Open100’. Help celebrate
the benefits of openness by nominating your favourite organizations or
platforms at:


The Open 100 <http://www.openbusiness.cc/category/directory/>


Follow The Open 100 on Twitter here. <http://twitter.com/TheOpen100>



------------------------------------------------------------------------
Got a cool Hotmail story? Tell us now
<http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/>