Common sense says collaborate

Adriana wrote yesterday about ‘creative destruction’ — referring to the recent decision by Creative to threaten legal action against a developer who wrote Vista drivers for some of Creative’s graphics cards.

The days of command and control are long over for companies like Creative; today, people will hack, modify — and even crack if needs be — to make things work better. And work better not just for them, but for other people too.

I wrote the other day over at the Skype UK blog about the launch of the Byron Review, and suggested that caution should be exercised before attempting to invest heavily in tools to clamp down on young peoples’ use of the internet and other technologies.

The same principle applies as above — I suspect they’ll be unsuccessful. Unsuccessful in the macro sense, of course — blocking MySpace in schools doesn’t mean that children won’t use it; they’ll just head to their mobiles, or sneak downstairs after their parents have gone to sleep. What’s concerning is that organisations like Creative and local education authorities seem to think that attempting to address the micro ‘problems’ (recalcitrant indie developers or socially active childen) either absolves them of the responsibility to think about the macro issues, or just makes them go away.

As Adriana says:

… let me just point out that if your business behaviour gets so glaringly overwritten by common sense, you have a problem.

Common sense in these cases should suggest a collaborative solution — ‘creative’ solutions to problems should be rewarded rather than stamped out. The institutionalisation of a process of stakeholder collaboration, for example, has the potential not only to improve consumers’ lives, but to become a tool of competitive advantage. Wins all round?