Imagine companies without managers or employees. Just contributors. You decide what work you do, when you do it, and how. Contribution determines your ownership, not job titles or office politics. Problems are solved collaboratively. Quickly. Efficiently. And innovation is through the roof.

This kind of business isn’t just an idea. It exists. It’s a system we developed called The Open Enterprise Model. We use it and love it. And now, through the BetterMeans Platform, our aim is to make this model available to everyone who wants it.

The conventional model of business management is old. It’s a dinosaur. It emerged before bottled beer, light bulbs, and the abolition of slavery. And while the world moved forward ushering in democracy and cell phones and the Internet, this old fossil of a management system hasn’t evolved at nearly the same pace.

New ways of self-governing have demonstrated how teams of unfunded, unpaid workers can out-compete giants like Microsoft. Why? The conventional business model isn’t just old. It’s broken.

Business as usual says: “Without managers, workers won’t do anything. Without limited decision-makers, there would be bad choices. Without control, there would be chaos.”

Nature says otherwise.

Whether it’s birds flying in a V-formation, bees in a hive, or people who share only a vision—order naturally emerges out of chaos. Thus, we created the Open Enterprise Model and an online collaboration system which taps into this power to organically self-organize. The result is stronger companies and happier people who love their work.

• Small, self-managing teams; Communities are self-defining
• Equity (every team member an owner, and an investor)
• Trust through transparency, accountability, and reputation
• Emergent team intelligence is higher than it’s smartest members
• Commitment is voluntary
• Individuals are richly empowered with information
• Compensation is based on contribution
• Capability counts. Not credentials, titles, connections, seniority…etc.
• Experimentation beats planning
• The team is a lattice not a hierarchy

This is where you can learn as much as you need about BetterMeans and the Open Enterprise model.  We welcome you to dig deeper and find out more, and we are excited to hear about your thoughts and ideas.

Our White Paper

The Open Enterprise Governance... read more