Bruno

Discussion (3) ¬

1. 
   TlalocW

   August 31, 2018 at 12:58 am | #

   There was a book published a few years ago called, “The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World With Kindness,” which this strip reminds me of. It had several stories of various business-people going against the grain of being all in it for yourself to being more sharing and open, even with competitors. I need to read it again, but everything is in boxes.
2. 
   llirium

   August 31, 2018 at 9:56 am | #

   It reminds me a bit of the Linux community. It’s a race of ideas to the top, but there is usually one (or maybe more) benevolent dictators determining the quality of the code or packages submitted.

   Nobody owns it all, but everyone can “fork” the code if ever a software team makes too many bad decisions that the community doesn’t like. Ideas are shared freely and usually things get better by not keeping secrets. It’s competitive, yes, but most people are actually using the programs to what code they’re submitting, so it’s also selfishly motivated progress while also helping others.
3. 
   Peter Rogan

   August 31, 2018 at 9:15 pm | #

   Collaboration like this works best in industries, like programming and application development, and advertising, where new ideas benefit all and the market is large enough to experiment and survive the bad ideas or bad implementations that inevitably occur. It works less well, or not at all, in tightly-regulated industries, e.g., railroads, or mature markets with little growth potential at all, e.g. retail, beer, Western auto companies.

   Oddly enough, this method verges on conspiracy when used in certain industries requiring tight control of their market, like petroleum or pharmaceuticals or tobacco. Not that they don’t collaborate, mind, but they don’t tell people about it and will deny it when confronted. Funny old world, eh?