Interconnections and Openness in Business (brainstorm)

Interconnections and Openness in Business

Two techniques that businesses use to create need are to create a dependence on only their product and to hide what they know to create rarity. Dependence and rarity are what modern businesses thrive on. The system is starting to fall apart with the advent of the Internet. How can businesses survive with the multitude of businesses in the same sector and the lack of rarity of information?

Interconnection can go further than just between vendor and the business. Connecting to other businesses, especially in creative and unusual ways, can create synergy that no other single business can provide. Outsourcing is a start, but it is nothing more than having a vendor for what is usually employed within the organization. What if you could create a business just of other businesses? You could buy from one business and sell through another. Some have caught onto movie and game trade-in programs. Find a store that sells an item at a lower price than what another store has it for trade in credit. Buy low and sell high. But, problems do arise. How you deal with a business can be similar to a computer program's interface (the application programming interface). In UNIX programs where made to be able to work together, but in a graphical desktop operating system, like Microsoft Windows, the programs are separate and don't work together nicely. How could you get audio player to interface with the word processor? Like some of Microsoft's software, some businesses like to be overwhelmingly huge. You go into a super market and there is no sign of their competitor. They have you trapped. Thankfully, Microsoft has improved their product, but they had to steer their freighter through a minefield.

Interconnectivity is quite simple and may prove then next step in creating a business. Many “get rich quick” schemes incorporate interconnected businesses without creating a business themselves. Some real estate “flippers” claim that they don't need a license, while real estate businesses do. Wisdom can be taken from computer programming and UNIX. In The Art of UNIX Programming rules, such as modularity and having a clean interface, can be ported to the business world.

How can open source software be profitable? Profit is always on the mind of the businessperson. Why shouldn't it be? If it wasn't, you would have a nonprofit. In American the central philosophy is freedom. How can freedom be extended to business and products? Open source software has shown that knowledge products can still succeed without copyrights. The GNU General Public License does not exclude people from exchanging the software with money. Although the license does not specify that business can profit from the software, it does not limit the price for transfer costs. The price could include a profit for the business. According to the license creating the software yourself is different from copying the software. If you own the software, you can get rid of the license and market it as a propriety. But, non-owners cannot remove the license.

Using both interconnectivity and openness can bring together a community of followers for your product that will enhance the experience of others and maybe other products.