The creator of Veja, Sebastien Klopp, has announced that he will press legal action against Primark for copying the design of his best selling product, the Veja V 10 trainers. View this post on Instagram It’s not cool to copy. Period. “But knocking off sustainable brands is, I think, a special case. For not only are the copycats profiteering from …
6+ mainstream companies you wouldn’t suspect of open sourcing their ideas
When people hear that I help others get more power by giving up their ideas, they don’t understand or they don’t believe it at first, and next, they look at me suspiciously. Doing open source sounds stupid in the capitalist society we live in. Maybe developers and geeks can get away with it with their software or hardware. But that’s …
Could Open Source have saved Kodak?
Kodak. They were great with patents and very profitable photo films. But they invented digital cameras. And they hid their innovation because they made their photo films obsolete and unprofitable. Then came asian manufacturers who flooded the market with cheap digital cameras, destroying their margins. And eventually making them bankrupt. Cheap cameras, gopros, digital Canon’s, smartphones had all become the …
How the Repair Café started a global movement to slow down waste – and what we can learn from it
Almost ten years ago, a journalist called Martine Potsma decided to do something about the waste problems she saw around her, creating the first Repair Café. And this first Repair Café eventually grew from a one location event to a worldwide community far larger than the founder initially envisioned.. Today I’m going to share her story and how she inadvertently …
Everyone Working With Open Source and Communities Should Make Time To Read These 10 Classics
Looking for a good book about how you can work with communities? Here are some great books you should have on your shelf from people who’ve been involved in the creation and management of really powerful communities, which is something I deeply respect. Many of these books are available freely. I do have one request before you jump in: Even …
How Font Awesome became the most funded software project on Kickstarter
You might not have heard of Font Awesome, a font and icon toolkit made by Dave Gandy for use with Twitter Bootstrap, but you’ve probably seen their work everywhere on the Internet without even noticing. If you don’t know them, here are some incredible things they’ve achieved: Font Awesome has a 20% market share among those websites which use third-party …
How Ted Talks went from one to over 2600 events per year in 9 years
Whether you are a fan of TED talks or you find them a bit elitist, with over 1 billion views in 2012 from thousands of speakers, talks available in 116 languages and local events in 179 countries, you can’t deny that they’ve actually spread a lot of inspiring ideas that challenge the status quo. That’s why today I’m going to …
How Open Source will be everywhere
Remember how Amazon, Uber and Airbnb ran over physical retail, taxis and hotels with no one understanding what was happening to them? If you are in the business of creating technology, designs, processes or education, you’ve got a similar tsunami coming that will force you to rethink your business. And this tsunami is Open Source. Once there is an open source …
The Unsplash Formula: How Crew went from almost broke to getting 5 million visitors
How could you go from almost no traction and running out of money, to getting millions of visitors to your website. You could do like Crew accidentally did with Unsplash: Creating an open source side project that directs millions of visitors to your paid product. At their beginnings, when they were starting a marketplace for freelancers, they couldn’t find a …
Want to create a thriving social business? Stop promoting it’s social benefits
We all know that the world faces several environmental and social crisis. Isn’t it crazy that, even if it’s public knowledge, it’s so hard to collectively create positive alternatives to the society we have? Why it’s so hard to make social / open source / circular economy businesses work when we need them so much ? Why is money still …