January 25, 2014

Personal growth should be open.

More specifically, the pursuit of human flourishing should be an endeavor rooted in open science, open innovation, and open source principles.

• Open science: the umbrella term of the movement to make scientific research, data and dissemination accessible to all levels of an inquiring society, amateur or professional.
• Open innovation: a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as the firms look to advance their technology.
• Open source: as a development model promotes a) universal access via free license to a product’s design or blueprint, and b) universal redistribution of that design or blueprint, including subsequent improvements to it by anyone.

When you combine the three, you have a framework that allows for rapid human growth on a massive scale. It would draw upon the collective intelligence of researchers and innovators around the world who freely and fully publish their work for the world to see, and iterate from or replicate.

• Freely means the body of work should be available to anyone, at no charge other than the cost required for the distribution system.
• Fully means everything of relevance is published. Both advances and dead ends. The raw data as well as the polished analysis. The sketches and the blueprints.

Open growth would encompass all approaches to human flourishing, from tools, techniques, systems, strategies, and tactics.

Research and innovations from individuals of all types would fall under the open growth umbrella. Both professional and citizen scientists and professional and amateur innovators could contribute. Exploratory and established research and early and well-defined innovations would also be included.

A Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial or commercial, share alike license might be suitable, depending on the original creator’s intent.

Personal use and experimentation would always be encouraged.

Researchers and innovators would be financially rewarded for their contributions if and only if the open spirit of the innovation is maintained. Some innovators might release a product’s specifications for the DIY crowd, but also sell the product directly. Some might release a technique, and offer add-on services to help customers implement it. Others might crowdsource a promising new system and share the profits and data from implementing it as a paid service.

In the end, open growth could lead to a collectively developed repository of knowledge dedicated to human flourishing. A Wikipedia for personal growth.

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Instead, let’s publish the outcome data showing its effectiveness and design specifications so we can easily build our own.

For a similar concept dedicated to the open source economy, see Open Source Ecology.