Open Up Interfaces
for organizations
This Domain-Level Guide is designed to be used based on the Core Model. Please refer to the Open Up Interfaces Core Practice before exploring this guide.
overview
Opening Up Interfaces is closely related to Adding Randomness to the Mix. Opening Up Interfaces allows unexpected influences to trigger Fusions, discoveries, and imaginative ideas. But while Adding Randomness is more oriented to letting go and being attentive to random inputs, Opening Up Interfaces is premeditated, and it becomes an essential part of the design of your product, service, or operation mode.
When you Open Up Interfaces, you design your actions, setup, or offering in a way that will allow and encourages collaboration with others. At the core of this practice lies the mindset of co-creating. Being open and sharing is an essential starting point, but the goal is not to get feedback or input but to create something that brings greater value to all parties involved.
guide
Design Open Interfaces Within Your Organization
In a personal context, every interface is an external interface. On the other hand, an organization seems from the outside as one body, but it is often made of multiple parts with different goals and agendas. The bigger the organization, the more internal interfaces you can create and utilize within it.
When you design open interfaces within your organization, you maximize the value of your people and resources and the value they can create together. The impact of each person, group, or function can reach others and bring value to unexpected places, and together they can create things impossible to make alone.
- Create hubs where different people and groups can create better value together.
- Don’t consider only the external value your organization is aimed to deliver. An open interface can develop co-create internal practices, new methods, and cultural changes within the organization.
- The more diverse the hub you create and the more inviting the open interface are, the more surprising and creative the insights and outcomes will be.
Design Open Interfaces to the External World
In some organizations, an open interface to the external world is inherent in the business model. This is especially true in the context of products built as an ecosystem. But any organization can create external open interfaces, even beyond creating a product’s ecosystem.
When you create opportunities for collaboration and bidirectional influences with external parties, you allow more than just new kinds of inputs to affect your organization. You form a greater value network and could eventually deliver a more significant change and reshape reality.
- Create open interfaces with other organizations around common interests.
- Don’t necessarily focus on explicit business goals. Consider methods, tools, practices, or future-looking initiatives for such open interfaces.
- Share knowledge, data, and insights not just to get feedback and ideas but to genuinely create something new together
Explore Opportunities Originate from Interfaces
When an intriguing Fusion is triggered, it is essential to consider it further and keep the option of pursuing it open. Sometimes, it can affect your immediate goals and targets. At other times, it might continue to evolve in the background and have an implicit impact for a certain period.
The open interface can be utilized to further exploration and Evolution — don’t use the interface just for triggering ideas.
- Continue to explore the Fusions triggered with the Open Interfaces that triggered them.
- Evolve the ideas and allow them to affect your goals, targets, and sometimes even your vision.
examples
Example 1
Economy for the Common Good is a global movement aiming to create a model that businesses and other organizations can adopt to thrive while also contributing to the common good instead of going against it. Using Local Chapters and Hubs, the model is continually evolving, affecting an increasing number of organizations.
One of the advantages of the movement structure is that it creates a model applicable to any organization in any industry. The collaboration of people and organizations from entirely different domains promotes an otherwise impossible outcome.
Example 2
In any organization, many aspects affect practically everyone.
Imagine creating a think tank, not of experts per se, but instead of a diverse group of people affected by a particular aspect. Imagine allowing this group to shape this aspect within the organization. They are not acting as consultants or just a source of input for the thinking process — they become the owners and the leaders of the change. Together, they can shape it like none of them can do alone.
Suppose such a workgroup is truly open both in the way it is formed and in the way it is being managed. In that case, the outcome will not only be better and more creative — it will be more engaging and connected to the underlying currents within the organization.