Chris Grams

1699 points

Raleigh, NC

Chris Grams is the Head of Marketing at Tidelift and author of The Ad-Free Brand: Secrets to Building Successful Brands in a Digital World.

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Email: chris(at)tidelift.com

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Authored Content

What if politicians innovated the open source way?

In the discussions around some of my previous articles, I've noticed a trend: we seem to be focusing on cultural changes that need to be made for the open source way to be…

Is the traditional business world at war with creativity?

Earlier this week some colleagues and I attended a fantastic gathering of business and political leaders called the Emerging Issues Forum. The theme of the forum—interestingly…

Is Occupy Wall St. really an "open source protest?"

Three signs your corporate culture isn't ready for the open source way

It's a good bet that the next generation of defining companies will have corporate cultures built the open source way-- around openness and collaboration, while fostering…

The Apple exception: where open innovation theory breaks down

Over the last few weeks, I've noticed more folks pointing out a paradox that has been driving me nuts. As many companies embrace open innovation and culture, there is one…

Two different business organization charts

2 reasons why the term "crowdsourcing" bugs me

Interesting article in Forbes about the way Threadless, the awesome t-shirt company, thinks about community-building. For those of you who aren't familiar with Threadless…

Five questions with Anil Rathi of Idea Crossing

What the heck is an innovation competition? Can we compete and collaborate at the same time? Could we solve world hunger through collaborative competition? I quizzed Anil…

Authored Comments

cgrams

29 Sep 2010

Evaluating TEDx as a brand strategy

I like the way you articulated that Bruce, TEDx being the minor leagues where new talent is discovered, and clearly TEDx is a great community-building (and content-building, to your point) strategy-- think there's little doubt there.

I do wonder what the impact is on the big TED brand over time. I've heard people saying things like "I went to TED last week" when they were actually just talking about a TEDx event. Why? Maybe b/c they don't understand or care about the difference, or maybe because they like the idea of associating themselves with the big TED brand.

Over time, this will have an impact. I still haven't decided whether I think that impact will be positive or negative, though:)

cgrams

17 Sep 2010

Does your organization need a "no policy" policy?

Hi Andy--

As my favorite fortune cookie fortune once said "All is not *yet* lost."

Revolutions have to start somewhere. All it takes is a handful of companies like Netflix, treating their employees with respect and seeing success as an outcome, for something like this to become a respected organizational strategy.

I spend a lot of my time thinking about what could be... and for me (and for my company New Kind) this "no policy policy" idea is exactly the sort of thing we like to test out.

For us, its working pretty well, I'm happy to say! Maybe in a few years, there'll be more companies in your part of the world designed in such a way that a no policy policy could thrive.

I hope so!