Open Business Models

It's coming down to the wire on #ioe12 with Open Business Models being the topic of the week. This week (unlike previous weeks) didn't have a video to watch in addition to the readings, but it was predominantly readings. The topics for the readings this week were a mix of author's perceptions around the topic of open publishing (and therefore open business models); the effect that open publishing has had on physical book purchased (or rather correlations between books being available for free, and their sales pre-and-post being available for free); and a case study of Flat World Knowledge.

I read a few articles an skimmed some. The academic in me thinks that open publishing is a good idea, especially when it comes to publicly funded institutions (of one sort or another). It's our civic duty to openly publish if we receive state moneys (and most schools do receive some sort of state money). On top of that, as anyone in academia knows, the currency of the land is reputation, not money.  Academics don't get money (or much money) from academic publishing, so why keep it closed?

The MBA in me, on the other hand, struggles to find a way to make this viable.  Academic texts actually do have a printed value; so while students can get the textbook for free electronically, they might actually pay some money to get the paper version because it's more conducive to effective study habits. Novels, on the other hand, once you read them, that's it. Why would you buy a paper version? (Unless of course you are giving it as a gift to someone who might enjoy it!)  The silver lining here is that this arena of open business models is ripe for innovation and each opportunity can be excitingly unique. You can't take a cookie-cutter approach and be successful with it, thus every business will be unique and another puzzle to solve, another nut to crack. To borrow #gamemooc terms - there are ample opportunities for fiero in this.  By the way, Open Business Models aren't new to this MOOC - go back and review Week 2, Open Source, and view The Revolution OS.  Quite a few example of OPen business models there.

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