Fear of Open
The unspoken elephant in the room when talking about open business models is fear.
I started using Creative Commons licenses in 2003 as part of an initiative I led for the Ministry of Advanced Education in British Columbia that provided funds to colleges and universities for collaborative development of for-credit online learning courses and resources. As a condition of receiving a grant the Ministry wanted grantees to share their resources and we adopted Creative Commons as a mechanism for enabling that sharing. On announcing this requirement I immediately received e-mails and phone calls from institutions upset with the requirement to share. And thus began my long journey with Creative Commons and exposure to fears people have of openness and sharing. That program continued for nine years and over that time I developed a thick skin and answers to many of these fears.
Lately I’ve been leading a lot of workshops on open business models. A Creative Commons colleague Kelsey Wiens from South Africa has been visiting with me and shared a technique she’s been using to surface and deal with fear of open. I tried it during the workshop I did this week and really liked it — thank you Kelsey!
At the start of the workshop I asked all the participants to take a minute and write on post-it notes fears they have or they’ve heard others express about open business models, sharing, and open licensing. Here is what they came up with:
- If it’s free how do I make money?
- If everyone can see my stuff I’ll be exposed and criticized.
- My value is offering something no one else has.
- These are my “secrets” I don’t want to share.
- What if someone takes my work and sells it or calls it their own?
- If it’s free how good can it be?
- But what about cost? What’s in it for us? What’s the ROI?
- How is it sustainable?
- My boss will see my work.
- My ideas are worth $millions. Why give them away?
- What about compensation for creators?
- No one will use my stuff.
- Why would anyone care about my stuff.
- I’ll do something stupid that is recorded.
- My resources aren’t good enough or aren’t “ready”.
- Collaborators may take my work in directions I don’t intend.
- Hassle of supporting it — too many e-mails.
- It is easier to just use a “commercial” solution.
- People will find obvious problems in my works.
- But its mine.
- People will steal my stuff.
- Can “everyone” have access to it?
- But I might want to make money from it some day.
- Won’t this make my job redundant? Why would I help make that happen?
- If anyone has access and someone does something illegal I will be liable.
- If I share then I lose control of my own works.
- I put a lot of work into this someone might change it.
- Who updates the work and ensures quality?
- How will we make money if we give stuff away?
- Applying a business model to sharing will destroy the spirit of openness.
- Change — AAAAAARGH!
This list is pretty typical of initial reactions to calls for sharing, use of Creative Commons, and open business models.
I’ve found that these fears really block creative thinking. Fear closes the mind and defeats change and action. These fears stem from the current environment we are in. Focusing on the fears and answering each one prevents innovative thinking about new ways of doing things and generation of new environments. So I had everyone put their fear post-its on a large sheet of paper titled “Free Parking” and asked participants in the workshop to park these fears as we engaged in developing open business models.
Open business models are a new way of doing things. To fully imagine an open business model requires imagination and actions based on abundance not scarcity. Some are calling scarcity based economics the old economy and abundance the new economy. But it’s hard while both economies are happening concurrently not to let the tradition of scarcity based thinking affect our business model plans.
Joseph Campbell once said, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” Through this open business models work I aim to have people thinking creatively and excited about the new opportunities openness brings. Excited enough to enter the cave.
