Generative Business Practice: Questions from Harvard’s Digital Initiative

I got lots of feedback from the folks who participated in the HBS Digital Initiative seminar where I presented some big picture ideas about generative practices.  

As promised, I’m summarizing what they shared with me on the index cards we used to gather up ideas.

While I was so. glad. that I asked for their comments, I did make one mistake:

I didn’t ask for their permission to share their names along with their questions. I won’t be able, therefor, to give specific people credit for their contributions (although, anyone who wants to can claim and/or extend an idea in the comments section below!).

I added some links so that you can check out things related to each comment, while I’m busy forming actual answers.

Participants Were Excited About Generativity And…:

• Taking ideas about ‘positive organizational scholarship’ beyond the level of individual behaviors and outcomes, and beyond the interpersonal relationships, to consider how an organization might be positive as a member of its own community/network

• The opportunity for an organization to be a leader in being generous, and in changing the expectations for how organizations should behave and succeed.

• Open APIs — “I’m totally with you on the role that these play in triggering innovation, and also on how they are example of generative practice.”

Ideas to Explore/Think About:

• Parallels to commons theory (e.g., work of Elinor Ostrom)
• Ecosystem stakeholders’ approach
• Rival goods vs non-rival goods, and how the type of good influences generative practices
• Consider the boundary conditions of generativity (when companies would want to be generative/ generous)
• Consider the nature of the exchange between the generative company and its specific partner(s), and the generative company and the larger neighborhood.
• App stores (e.g., iTunes vs Google Play, Amazon App Store, SideME) — Shouldn’t there be something already written (researched) on how app stores are generative?
  (cv: there is a dissertation to be written on the role of SDKs]

Resources to consult:

• Watch the Ted talk on Smart Failure by Eddie Obeng
• Read the book, Origins of Human Communications, by Michael Tomasello
• Read  Lewis Hyde’s book As Common As Air

• Fits right in with ideas captured in ClueTrain Manifesto

• Nice intersection with critique of business-as-usual by UnderCurrent folks

Questions to Address:

• Are these generative practices are embedded in digital and software engineering work, vs. visible or even possible in more material/analog businesses and business practices?

• In other forms of ‘work’, what might be some classic generative practices?

• How/Does the idea of generativity travel beyond digital startups?

• Consider companies like Costco, Market Basket, Clover and others that provide “Good Jobs” (see The Good Jobs Strategy, by Zeynep Ton, a great book ~ cv). What is the role of basic employee remuneration and job structure in creating conditions where individual and organizations can be generative?

• Is “generative”, by definition, the same as being ‘fully open’? (Alt: Can a business be generative without being fully open?)

• Could there be a curated generative community?

• To what extent does commitment to transparency make organizations less flexible (and perhaps, less able to grow)?

• What are the boundaries of transparency– is ‘open’ ideal?

• What’s the role of privacy (especially since private communities online have much higher engagement) in an organization’s willingness to be generative, or in a situation’s generative potential?

• Do organizations have to be profitable (already) so that they can subsidize generative practices (which might cost them something, at some point)? Can generativity work without subsidies?

You can see from this list that I have lots of thinking to do– and I’m glad to have the feedback from colleagues to help me get a sense of what’s most challenging or interesting to them.  I’m also glad that I have an audio recording of the whole seminar, so that I can go back and listen to the questions & conversation in context. More soon.

Image: Origami, by Snugg LePup 

Tagged as: Community, digital initiative, generative, generative business, generative practice, harvard, open, transparent