Business Class
Despite Apple’s meticulous nature and infamous secrecy, the unveiling of the iPhone 4 did not go as planned. A Cali- fornia brewpub was likely not the place the company intended to reveal its latest game-changing device to the world. But, in March 2010, months before launch, that’s where engineer Gray Powell mis- takenly left it. As the story goes, Powell got a little tipsy on the night of his 27th birthday
and left the device on his bar stool. A fellow barfly discovered it and realized the
phone was no run-of-the-mill mobile—
the unreleased prototype was one of the
most advanced pieces of technology on
the planet. Weeks later, the handset was
sold for $5,000 to website Gizmodo,
which leaked the first photos of the
smartphone to the world.
In contrast, Google’s Android phone
received a different introduction. On
Nov. 5, 2007, the company’s then-CEO,
Eric Schmidt, held a press conference,
flanked by chief executives of HTC,
Motorola and other members of the
34-company Open Handset Alliance, to
outline their plans to provide free software to smartphone makers.
“It’s incredibly important to say
this is not the announcement of the
Google phone,” Schmidt said. In fact,
the world’s first Android phone, the
HTC Dream, didn’t hit the market until
almost a year later.
Tech companies are
increasingly turning
to open product
development to spur
innovation and cut
costs. Is it time your
company stopped
keeping secrets, too?
Let There Be Light
BY JOHN PATRICK PULLEN
ILLUSTRATION BY BROCK DAVIS
The two devices are similar, but after
an idea is born, which is the better way to
bring it to market: in a closed shop or an
open environment?
“This is a central question in the field
of product development and one that is
challenging corporations everywhere,”
says Brad Barbera, executive director of
the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA), a nonprofit
aiding new product developers and manufacturers. The open-vs.-closed issue
may seem black and white, but Barbera
sees it as a spectrum of gray on which
companies can position themselves
wherever they’re most comfortable—
from fully open to completely closed.
“The challenge is for corporations to
find where they have the most success
along that continuum,” he says.
Risks and Rewards
Barbera says there are no solid figures
on how much development is either
open or closed. This is partially due
to the continuum (some companies
are partially open, whereas others are
relatively closed), but it is also because
companies that run closed shops don’t
necessarily participate in external
research. Nonetheless, despite the
Googles and Wikipedias of the world,
Robert Brunner estimates that between
80 and 90 percent of today’s innovation
is still done behind closed doors.
