Robert and Michael are discussing whether or not companies can make money
by giving ideas away.
A good example of this would be IBM's open architecture for the PCs, which
helped expand the market at a much greater rate than Apple was able to
achieve with its proprietary architecture.
However, I doubt there are any general rules about this, at least as we
understand these situations now. What may work for now may not work
later. Microbrewery beer is an example of market growth precisely because
of the mystique of local, trade-secret recipes. At least if you believe
the hype.
==
Rol Fessenden
LL Bean, Inc
76234,3636@compuserve.com
--Rol Fessenden <76234.3636@CompuServe.COM>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>