The Open-Closed Spectrum - Challenging the Boundaries of Business Systems

The Open-Closed-Spectrum addresses the changing boundaries of and within business systems. That means there are closed (i.e. controllable by a certain entity) - and open (i.e. not controllable) elements of a business system. Traditionally, most parts of a business (e.g., innovation, development and production) happened in a quite closed environment (i.e. confidential and hidden from external views). Recently, we experience a tendency towards opening up and connecting with partners, customers and even competitors. In this report you find thoughts about new ways of collaboration among the stakeholders of a business, new business models and changes of eco systems due to new boundaries.
This report is structured in three parts, namingly Trends, Scenarios and Ideation. Accordingly, the authors first analyzed status quo and trends in the topic of the Open-Closed Spectrum. Building upon these findings four scenarios have been developed vividly depicturing possible futures. In the Ideation part five business concepts are described and tested against the scenarios.
The envisioned concepts range from the so-called Swoosh (a 24/7 citywide delivery system that brings courier service to the masses) and SenseMi (a holistic medical health solution that connects experience and knowledge communities with professional medical service) over RepliGate (an all-round solution for 3D printing that could lead to a reorganization of large parts of the manufacturing industry) and 2gather (a communication and collaboration solution accessible from everywhere) to Edugate (an online platform that aggregates and structures open educational resources and tailors them to the needs of learners, universities and corporations).