Edge Patterns: Closed to Open
Netflix decides to pioneer
open innovation in media by offering a $1 mil prize for improving it's recommendation engine.
To do so, crucially, it's opening access to it's enormous dataset - it is shifting viscerally from closed to open.
A deep lesson is being taught by Netflix: in a post-network economy where value creation outside the boundaries of the firm is exploding, staying closed will, more and more often, be a dominated strategy.
Put this move in context: how different is it from what Innocentive does for cosmetics/pharma/etc? Not different at all. The point is that new economic patterns are sweeping across the economy like a tsunami, reshaping value chains, and redefining dominant strategies.
Shifting from closed to open is the most basic of these new patterns.