Open Business

Promoting, selling, debugging one of the first open-source hardware in the world of physical computing. Developing & releasing open-souce IDE for programming different platforms produce all over the world

You can download and realise your own personal hardware, using and sharing somebodyelse’s design. A huge crowd-related experience pointing on the playground, where all the steps are pulled behind. boom.

Basecamp is a web-based project-management tool developed by 37signals.

Basecamp offers to-do lists, wiki-style web-based text documents, milestone management, file sharing, time tracking, and a messaging system.

backstage.bbc.co.uk is a pilot for open innovation. backstage.bbc.co.uk provides data, resources and support for users who wish to build prototypes and proofs of concepts using BBC material. BBC encourages people both inside and outside the BBC to share knowledge, ideas & prototypes with each other.

BBC has decided – although still in pilot phase – to give away their content for free for others to re-use and maybe create new product/services out of (like a phone application). People can’t change the content itself, it is more about you as a consumer being able to create tools/programmes/researches around their content.

The 21st Century Network (21CN) programme is the network transformation project of the UK telecommunications company BT Group plc. It will see the UK incumbent’s telephone network move from the present AXE/System X Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) to an Internet Protocol (IP) system. As well as switching over the PSTN, BT has revealed plans to deliver many additional services over their new network, such as on-demand interactive TV services.

They are moving from proprietary telephone lines, to new IP communication lines. This will bring about further advances in the world of open source technology as more people get access to the internet through the integrated communications systems.

Bug Labs develops BUG, a modular, open source device development platform. Comprised of modular components known as BUGmodules, users snap together hardware blocks and program in Linux and Java to develop their own gadget. Such BUGmodules include touchscreen LCD, GPS, camera, motion sensor, audio in/out, 3G and many more.

Bug Labs believes that innovation comes from open collaboration – whether within a community, or given the option to break apart hardware without concern for warranty or ceased support. The majority of its users have actually modified the hardware significantly from purchase, whether by developing custom enclosures or creating entirely new modules from scratch.

The Open Ventures Challenge created a diverse online community and gave them the challenge of creating new fundraising model for Cancer Research UK. NESTA, leading cancer charity Cancer Research UK and collaboration experts mo.jo worked together to build an online community of people with business ideas that could generate cash for Cancer Research UK.

Cancer Research UK created an online community to come up with new ways of earning money. So opennes in this case is about crowdsourcing new ideas. Ideas were submitted online and the strongest built up venture teams to develop them into more viable business models. In summer 2009 the groups presented their ideas to Cancer Research UK’s venture board.

dotopen is a platform for decision makers to connect & collaborate. It’s an online communication platform for organizations, within which decision makers can research, discover and contact potential clients, competitors, investors, suppliers, and other partners.

dotopen fosters an open community of organizations who value transparency, honesty and cooperation and we develop tools to improve our members’ ability to strategically compete…

dotopen isn’t really an open company themselves, they facilitate openness to other organisations. They enable other companies to discover other organisations/potential clients, follow them and connect to them. So their business model or application might not be open for the public to alter (you can only upload your own profile) but they help other organisations become more open in doing business.

Online auctioning which gives a frame for  people to buy and sell their own items. More people are now for the first time, choosing to skip the auctioneering if favour of the ‘buy it now’ option.

The online marketplace removed barriers and opened the world  to direct sales of personal items between person to person.

Since February 2008, Ebbsfleet - a club UK football club – has been owned by the web-based venture MyFootballClub, whose members may vote on team selection and player transfers, instead of those decisions being made exclusively by the club’s management and staff as at most other clubs.

Instead of the Football Club being owned by some rich guy who hires a few experts to decide on who to hire and who might play or not – this Football Club is being owned by mainly its supporters. Everyone who wants to have a say in who get’s hired and is playing can become a member of the website – MyFootballClub - and can vote on these issues. This way decisions…

Freebase, created by Metaweb Technologies, is an open database of the world’s information. It’s built by the community and for the community – free for anyone to query, contribute to, build applications on top of, or integrate into their websites. The information is supplemented by the efforts of a passionate global community of users who are working together to add structured information on everything from philosophy to European railway stations…

Freebase is a platform that contains data for everyone to use – contribute to, question etc, so openness here is all about giving away data for free in such way that you can not only read/absorb the content but you can also interact with it (change it/contribute to it etc.). Without the contributors no Freebase, you as a contrbutor are essential and part of the brand.