I keep thinking that the best ideas will come when we can get past self-interest and get to a baseline of true collaboration. In my own work, I’m fortunate to have a tremendous creative partner that has great ideas and insights that feed well into the way I think and together we’ve been able to create work I’m very proud of as a creative.

However, this isn’t always the rule. My question is why? What do we have to lose by opening up and letting good thinking in regardless of where it comes from? Are we that territorial?

This from Get Back In The Box by Douglas Rushkoff.

Open source is more than a computer-programming ethos. It’s the impetus to an approach toward work and life that makes secrets and protectionism obsolete, and opens the floodgates of innovation on an unprecedented scale. As of yet, however, most people and businesses are still unprepared to confront the challenges to their own sense of competence that go along with it.

In other words, as Rushkoff writes, “Open source may be a new business model but it’s also a well tested, even ancient, approach to innovation.”

Personally, I like the notion of transparency. It’s honest and sincere and in an industry plagued by deception and skepticism, we need a fresh dose of truth. This begins with the ways in which we work and conduct ourselves. Besides, if we haven’t figured this out yet, people don’t want to be sold, they want instead to be inspired by brands that mean something to them, brands that resonate with their value systems and sense of self.

We gotta start somewhere. Why not the creative process?