Generative Orgs

Are All Generative Businesses a Little Naughty? The case of MakeLoveNotPorn

April 3, 2014

Tweet 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 […]

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Generativity, in General

March 28, 2014

Tweet The word ‘generative’ may be unfamiliar to many business people, but the quality of generativity is something we’ve sought in our companies and our work practices for a long time.   Something is generative when it’s able to create something new, something original, or something alive. A generative idea produces new ideas, a generative process […]

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Three Design Principles for Generative Business

March 20, 2014

Tweet 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 […]

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What Makes Digital Tech Companies Models of Generativity?

March 13, 2014

Tweet 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 […]

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5 Reasons Why Generative Businesses Are So Powerful

March 6, 2014

Tweet 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 […]

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What does it mean to “Boost” another business?

February 12, 2014

Tweet A few weeks ago I sent my book proposal draft out to a few colleagues to get their feedback on the ideas. [**Trigger alert, for all you academics.] Asking for other people’s feedback is almost as hard as responding to their feedback, especially when the feedback is surprising.   In this case, I was […]

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3 Jobs Where You Can Lead The Boost Revolution

January 29, 2014

Tweet Hankering to lead the Boost Revolution in your own company?   You can boost other businesses while you build your own no matter what job you hold in your organization. All you need to do is shift to more generative practices for your day to day work.  But if you really want to get […]

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What’s a Generative Organization?

December 11, 2013

Tweet What word captures the central quality of a Boost organization?  Generative. What word seems weird to a whole lot of business people? Generative. Funny how that works.  Now, what to do about it? I had a very smart friend read over my book proposal, and he said that the word ‘generative’, along with the […]

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How To Choose Business Partners for a Boost Economy

February 5, 2013

Tweet A friend told me once that we should only share our love with people who can benefit from it. My friend argued that even though we might want to ‘love’ everyone, in reality we can’t. So, she said, we should be choosy about whom we love. For a long time I thought that advice […]

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5 Ways to Expand How We Think About Value in a Boost Economy

November 14, 2012

Tweet It can be hard to convince certain “business” people that it actually makes sense to conduct their business in a generous, boosty way that creates opportunity for others. The mainstream business conversation has remained so wedded to the notion that ‘price’ accurately captures ‘value’, and to the belief that financial goals trump other kinds […]

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