With so much innovation happening in open source projects, why not take advantage of it across your product and supply chain?
I’ve been writing for a while on topics related to product and supply chain management in the context of open source communities, and I’ve noticed a few consistent themes in my articles and blog posts. Most notable is the call for companies to move from the “not invented here” syndrome to a more externally focused view. After all, if so much innovation is taking place in open source projects, why not take advantage of it to the fullest extent possible? You can see this theme manifested in the following ways:
- Open source program office and management: This is all about providing structure for creating and implementing open source strategy, including programs and systems to help engineering teams meet legal requirements for participating in external open source communities. This is only valuable if the company places strategic importance on influencing external communities.
- Open source product management: The practice is designed to add value to open source software and platforms, consisting of dev/test procedures, packaging, support, risk management, and anything geared toward creating a reliable product or service that customers pay for. The subtext here is that a company relies on external open source code for its product development.
- Open source supply chain management: Much like in product management, the subtext is the reliance on external software to fulfill product development requirements. This is the process for procuring external software and building contingency plans into the process to account for changing community dynamics that could have a negative impact on product development.
The common thread is the emphasis on external origins for core software that’s utilized strategically, either for product development or internal consumption. This is why I started the Open Source Entrepreneur Network: I noticed a distinct lack of consensus around best practices in these areas. As I delved more into this area, I discovered a wealth of literature around the concepts of business ecosystems, but in a different context.
The difference is that now, in addition to businesses filling out a set of ecosystems with a variety of competitive and cooperative touchpoints, there are nonprofit organizations and foundations that round out the mix, adding layers of complexity to an already complex system. Whereas before you had to learn to make strategic alliances with some companies to move forward with a business, already a difficult process, now you also need to identify which communities and open source ecosystems to align with to drive both higher efficiency and the base rate of innovation.
Furthermore, there is a difference between merely consuming external software and actively participating in its creation. The former is now widely regarded as a necessity in today’s business climate, but the latter is still a dark art, long slagged as a marketing ploy, something to spread warm fuzzies and other non-specific fluffy benefits long associated with brand development and other marketing activities without a well-defined ROI.