IN THE current age of the 'prosumers' (or proactive consumers), businesses that are still marketing the traditional way are missing the beat. The Internet has placed power squarely in the hands of savvy Net users around the world. And the businesses that lead today are those that have embraced a mass collaboration model, one that enables a mutually beneficial relationship with customers by providing them with the ability to collaborate and co-innovate, giving them a voice - and choice - in a world that is shrinking as a result of uninhibited information flow.

Mass collaboration, which is built on the foundation of open source, is a phenomenon that can no longer be ignored. An example of the booming success of mass collaboration is YouTube, the popular online video sharing site. A lesser known but no less innovative example exists in the Chongqing motorcycle industry in China, where the supply chain is shared among hundreds of small businesses, each focused on designing and producing a single part. The mass collaboration among the suppliers in this instance produced quality motorcycles that grew to 15 million units in just over a decade, and grabbed market share from better known Japanese and Western manufacturers.

Don Tapscott and Anthony D Williams, two modern-day thought leaders, described this business evolution as Wikinomics, defined as the 'new art and science of collaboration'. In a book of the same title that is commanding the attention of enterprising business leaders throughout the world, the authors expounded on how weapons of mass collaboration are upheaving the face of businesses today. The advent of powerful collaborative tools is giving end users across the globe the power to shape the way businesses conduct their daily operations, interact with consumers and develop new products.

The truth is, mass collaboration and open source are not new concepts. It arguably first emerged in the software world, where in 1991 a young student by the name of Linus Torvalds at the University of Helsinki released his first version of Linux, which he created as a hobby.

Today, Linux represents a compelling choice to a growing number of individual consumers and enterprises who refuse to be locked in by proprietary software giants with their high licensing fees and often restrictive upgrades. There is now a proliferation of powerful open source applications, trusted by many large corporations across the globe that is supported by a strong community of developers and users, united by their common quest for widespread innovation and freedom from cloaked source codes.

The reason for the success of the open source movement is simple. Businesses - just like consumers - want a choice of platforms, applications and service providers. They do not like being held hostage by powerful software vendors with often high-handed and exorbitant licensing policies.

However, let's examine the open source industry from a broader perspective in the light of four principles proposed in Wikinomics as the new business imperatives.

Openness: Open source thrives on the promise of shared knowledge, continuous innovation, and transparency. Open source software is constantly open to the injection of new ideas from its community. Source code of applications is made available to anyone who wishes to learn it, make changes to it and improve it so that there is continuous improvement of the product. As a result, bugs in the open source software are discovered more quickly and enhancements can be made available without the need to wait for a major release. Users of open source solutions are thus not tied to software companies' marketing time lines, where new product releases are based on perfectly timed campaigns designed to drive revenue - and not innovation, as it should be.

Peering: There is no hierarchy in the open source world. Anyone in the community can contribute to the product development. Open source recognises that intelligence and skills are not limited to the top echelons of the community. This gives way to a simple paradigm: that the best software wins. Software development is no longer the privilege of elite teams, and it is no longer bundled with the latest release. Open source solutions are made available to users who can download only what they need, so they can exercise choice over the applications they wish to deploy.

Sharing: Open source software has grown because there is a channel to discuss ideas and issues openly, which has led to the growth of a strong network and community that thrives on sharing of knowledge and expertise. In turn, this gives rise to collaborative innovation and collective advancement. Anyone can be a member of this community and ideas are generated collaboratively with the best solutions chosen for deployment.

Acting globally: The open source community is a global convergence of users and developers from various walks of life, brought together simply by their common interest. The diversity of the community, in itself, adds to the richness of the shared knowledge. The openness, peer support and unlimited sharing within the community epitomise globalisation at its best.

That said, while most of these capability enhancing solutions are made available freely and their source codes downloadable for easy customisation, serious businesses need serious committed service providers to help them get the most out of these solutions. Businesses should seek out partners who can package the best open source solutions with enterprise-class support with the assurance of reliability, flexibility, scalability and security.

Already, open source solutions are widely used in enterprise technology deployments in many Asia-Pacific corporations such as China Telecom, AIS in Thailand, the National Bank of Australia, the University of Seoul in Korea, and even homegrown innovators such as muvee Technologies and IP Mirror in Singapore.

The time has come to reap the true value of open source. Hail the era of unbridled innovation and freedom from technology dictatorships! If Wikinomics is indeed the future of the global economy, then open source solutions will be the platform of choice in this new age.

The writer is president, Red Hat Asia Pacific

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