The Open Source Corporation - 2

Scene Two

It is 10 years ago and I am doing productivity improvements at Delphi Automotive Systems working the rules of “lean manufacturing.” To most people in the business it represents one of the numerous variations on total quality management of Deming, Jarrand, and et.al. Ed Northern EVP of Manufacturing at Delphi had just arrived from General Electric and Jack Welch to deal with Delphi’s imminent separation from the General Motors family to operate independently as the world’s largest tier one supplier. The problem with lean at Delphi was the numerous in-house and outsourced suppliers in Canada, United States, and Mexico. The challenge: how to integrate geographically dispersed operations when half are not under your control!

Scene Three

It is 8 years ago and we are negotiating (our consulting business unit – Blanchard Solutions Group) a large, multiyear license of our intellectual property to the largest electrical contracting company in the United States. How do we price our multi-million dollar library? Can they customize it? And who owns it? How do we continuously improve the content and materials when the authors are resistant to change (and have a legitimate issue around quality and integrity of their brand) and unmovable when sharing royalties?

Scene Four

7 years ago at a fast growing bio-pharmaceutical company starts outsourcing non-core operations to keep it focused on FDA approvals and help the balance sheet by reducing overhead. We (I) become their outsourced Human Resource department. The net effect is we find it harder to affect strategy then when our relationship was as an external resource. They become more circumspect about sharing information or listening to ideas. BTW, we were hired for our expertise and track record for ensuring human resources is a key component of competitive advantage.

These situations are real and ongoing to those of us working as OD consultants, handled client to client, situation by situation. However, I was observing a pattern that was at first indiscernible and only revealed over time. The details brought into view the challenge of an outsourced yet integrated operation.

A business where a collection of businesses, each focused on respective core competence, fully integrated in an “open source” environment, providing incredible value by offering a complete and unique value proposition – high product quality, incredible buying and servicing experience, and at an industry-leading price.

Project 1440, the year Gutenberg created the printing press and revolutionized the value proposition for knowledge, is our guild of information>knowledge>insight providers seeking to change the consulting industry.

Interested?