Ubuntu In Business: The Dream of Clockwork PC

Over the coming weeks I will use this blog to explore and express the philosophy from which Clockwork PC's values are derived.

Clockwork PC was founded out of a desire provide a working commercial model for realisation of potential.

Not the phrase for realisation of potential: the ultimate aim of Clockwork PC is higher than maximal utilisation of employees' talents; rather, our dream is to have a commercially successful enterprise whose greatest goal is to help those it employs to be the best they can be.  Achievement of this goal will both entail and result in maximal utilisation of our employees' talents, which will be the bedrock of our success.

In the following articles we will explore how open source software development provides a working model for democratisation of an organisation, be it a government bureaucracy, a corporation, an institution, or an SME:

• Democratisation of an organisation is the key to maximal utilisation of its employees' talents;
• Democratisation of an organisation can only occur if it be the organisation's leaders' primary goal, in and of itself.
• Organisational leaders whose primary goal in and of itself is democratisation of the organisation cannot be products of the traditional, hierarchical power relations to which most organisations default.
• Organisational leaders who do take it upon themselves to create democratic institutions that do not descend into anarchy or management by committee require sophisticated mechanisms for collection of, processing of, and acting upon employees' feedback.
• Moreover, the organisation must establish incentives that reward free, open, honest discussion.

As we will see in the case of Canonical and the GNU/Linux Ubuntu operating system, this instance of open source software development offers a working model for precisely the democratisation described above.

These thoughts, like all software, are a work in progress.  I do not pretend to have all the answers and welcome any thoughtful feedback.