Radical Openness:

Access to information of a firm or government agency was never a thought in the past. “Openness” was never counted as an integral or important part of organizational growth. In fact hiding the information about the company and its operations was considered to be safe. However, in recent times, transparency has not only become an important but also innovative factor to excel in the market.
The first crucial aspect of radical openness is transparency. While secrecy and keeping the information opaque to the customers have been in practice of business behavior in the past, maintaining and defending secrets is costly and difficult in this period where there is a chance of vulnerability to the information the company wants to hide. Today’s most successful organizations have proactively anticipated the information needs of their stakeholders and willingly disclose required details about their business practices in order to build trust.
In the article, the author has mentioned four principles of Radical Openness, which led to revolutionary changes. * Transparency: The author mentions that the more naked you are the more it is easy to gain trust from the stakeholders. Whether it’s a government or a company, transparency will force to bring out the best. Appropriate transparency drops transaction and collaboration costs. It speeds up the metabolism of collaboration and contributes to overall organizational performance. However, this doesn’t mean all the secrets have to be disclosed. The best example provided in this cases is Zappos where it’s information was available to all the customers as to which product is being sold well etc. There are areas where secrecy is important, from business strategy to product release plans.

* Opening up for Innovation: In this principle collaboration and how the companies are adopting new approaches to innovation is mentioned. In todays world the pace of innovation and technological progress is such that the companies cannot solely rely on it’s employees. To compete with their peers, companies should get world’s best innovators into picture. This can be achieved by keeping their boundaries more porous, flexible and open. Creating an open platform brings the best outcomes.
However in order to make this possible, there should be a set of standards mentioned else the company might end up giving away its most priced possession, data. No other example other than Microsoft’s where kinect hardware issue can explain this. * Why sharing makes good Business Sense: This states that sharing of data can do more good than bad, which was a myth in the past. It has become very evident that a rigid approach of protecting intellectual property can sometimes cripple rather than enhance an organization’s ability to innovate and create value. This means that the companies place their intellectual assets in commons where more number of companies and individuals can use those assets to create more value.
While sharing data, not only with whom the data is being shared but also what data is being shared has to be taken care of. The best example to cite this is GSK Pharmaceuticals. How all the scientists came forward and collectively led the experiments and how sharing of their knowledge has expanded the horizon is worth understanding. * Radical Youth and the Global Fight for Freedom and Openness:
The author here mentions, “Openness is bringing empowerment and freedom.” Freedom is not only right to free speech, a free media, free association but also the opportunity to participate equally in building a more prosperous and sustainable global economy.
These profound shift, industrially and socially, which unveils all its process and movements over the globe making it grow unanimously is “Radical Openness”.
On a personal front I feel Radical Openness can bring in a whole new transformation in “how we used to” to “how we should” approach in every field of our lives.
In recent times, I came across an act by Government of Telangana, India. In this act, all the information about a person has been made available to everyone. By information it means assets, property value, income, etc. In this excavation, the Government could recover Millions of rupees hiding under the blanket called “Black Money.”

References:
Radical Openness: Four Unexpected Principles for Success ,Williams & Tapscott (2013)
https://www.saddahaq.com/humaninterest/telanganasurvey/a-guide-to-the-telangana-household-survey-on-19th-august