Category: Boost Economy
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How Generosity At Work Saved a Local Business
~ crossposted from cvharquail.com ~ A story from my own hometown… When I was getting my start-of-the-semester haircut in February, I was surprised to see Hannah, the woman who cuts my teenagers’ hair, working in the hair salon I go to. Hannah normally works at Parlor, which has a hipster clientele. Yet here she was…
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What Generosity At Work Looks Like: Subway Version
@Brian_Ashcraft of Kotaku shared this gif of two commuters who, somewhat accidentally, illustrate how one business can be generous with another while becoming stronger itself. The tall fellow ends up with a hand on each strap, making his own stance more sturdy. The shorter guy gets something to hold that he can actually reach,…
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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…
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From Generativity to Generosity: What’s at the core of these new business practices?
I’m experimenting with shifting from generativity to generosity to describe what’s unique about the business processes I’ve been studying, trying to distill these ideas into a form that’s simple and easy to convey. Can the term generosity carry these ideas well? At the very core of generativity is the concept of generosity. It’s not for nothing…
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Only Transparent AND Open Practices Generate Opportunity For Your Network
Businesses need to be both transparent and open to create opportunities for themselves and their entire network. Yet even though we know that qualities like “open” and “transparent” are preconditions for innovation, we often aren’t clear about what these terms actually mean. Sometimes people even use the terms interchangeably, as though what’s transparent and what’s open are the…
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Are All Generative Businesses a Little Naughty? The case of MakeLoveNotPorn
No startup challenges our norms about ‘appropriate business’ more than MakeLoveNotPorn. MakeLoveNotPorn (MLNP) is a user-generated crowdsourced video platform that celebrates “real world sex”. MLNP is a legal, lucrative, and liberatory disruptor of the adult entertainment industry. It’s also a profoundly generative business. MLNP is generative not because it’s naughty, but because of how it’s naughty.…
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Three Design Principles for Generative Business
As I was being nudged to consider whether the term “boost” really captured the central dynamic of generative businesses, I realized that it actually only represented the very first element of what it takes to be generative. Note: Since this is more like an essay than a post, I’ve added some jumps so that you…
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What Makes Digital Tech Companies Models of Generativity?
Buffer, WordPress, AirBnB, Waze, LoveWithFood, ModCloth, Etsy— so many of the organizations I’m using as examples of generative businesses share a similar profile: They are relatively small, young, organized around a core software process or product, filled with coders and developers, and part of a specific tech community. Why is generativity such a defining part…
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5 Reasons Why Generative Businesses Are So Powerful
I’d rather help one organization become generative than help a dozen organizations become ‘great’. Why? Because one generative organization has more positive impact on the world than a whole industry of organizations that are efficient, excellent, profitable, and self-focused. For generative businesses, neither the size nor the direction of their impact is accidental. Here are…