Access to Information

Radical Openness:

Access to information of a firm or government agency was never a thought in the past. “Openness” was never counted as an integral or important part of organizational growth. In fact hiding the information about the company and its operations was considered to be safe. However, in recent times, transparency has not only become an important but also innovative factor to excel in the market.

The first crucial aspect of radical openness is transparency. While secrecy and keeping the information opaque to the customers have been in practice of business behavior in the past, maintaining and defending secrets is costly and difficult in this period where there is a chance of vulnerability to the information the company wants to hide. Today’s most successful organizations have proactively anticipated the information needs of their stakeholders and willingly disclose required details about their business practices in order to build trust.

In the article, the author has mentioned four principles of Radical Openness, which led to revolutionary changes.

• Transparency: The author mentions that the more naked you are the more it is easy to gain trust from the stakeholders. Whether it’s a government or a company, transparency will force to bring out the best. Appropriate transparency drops transaction and collaboration costs. It speeds up the metabolism of collaboration and contributes to overall organizational performance.

However, this doesn’t mean all the secrets have to be disclosed. The best example provided in this cases is Zappos where it’s information was available to all the customers as to which product is being sold well etc. There are areas where secrecy is important, from business strategy to product release plans.

• Opening up for Innovation: In this principle collaboration and how the companies are adopting new approaches to innovation is mentioned. In todays world the pace of innovation and technological progress is such that the companies cannot solely rely on it’s employees. To compete with their peers, companies should get world’s best innovators into picture. This can be