As the Chief Operating Officer in Delta Airlines, Jim Whitehurst led a massive organization of men and women who grew up in a world of hierarchy and who reliably followed the chain of command. The typical chain of command is too slow; internal resources are too limited; people are already executing beyond normal expectations.

His story starts with the day he was asked to interview as the Chief Executive Officer position at Red Hat, the leading open-source software company which apply the open principles of management – based on transparency, participation and community – reinvent the organization for the fast-paced connected era.

Whitehurst gives listeners an insider’s look into why organizations should be open, agile and responsive and how the top-down decision making doesn’t work at the company like Red Hat whose business model depends on the collaboration and shared ideas, rather than control of assets. With the open organization idea, he learnt that the skills required to lead a company relies heavily on the principle of open innovation are vastly different from those needed to run business based on the hierarchical structure of a conventional organization.

In ‘The Open Organization – Igniting Passion and Performance’, Whitehurst describing the value of a passionate organization – shows how to leverage it to build community, respond quickly to opportunities, harness resources and talent both inside and outside the organization, and inspire, motivate, and empower people at all levels to act with accountability.

Employees are more likely to be engaged when they feel their ideas are listened to, respect leader who embrace disagreement, allow the best idea to win out and are likely to be more productive in an organisation. Whitehurst mentioned that in his Delta Airlines experience prove that people are willing to make substantial personal sacrifices if they believe they are part of a boarder plan for success.

‘Meritocracy, not Democracy’ is build within the Red Hat, where everyone has the right to speak and access the kinds of tools to ensure the employees voice is heard. Red Hat encourage the associates to work on what interest them and let them to watch what happens when they put their energy and talent into their work. In supporting the growth pf meritocracy, leaders need to keep ears open to not simply the loudest voices but the ones that carry the most sway.

The Open Organization – Igniting Passion and Performance is a must-read for leaders whom struggling to adapt their practices to the value of the digital era. This book provides the outline in reinventing your organization where Whitehurst personal experiences and advices for leading an open organization along with instructive examples, helps to lead in a society being redefined by expectations of transparency, authenticity, and openness.

Reviewed by Ashila Mohammad Dadi, May 2018.

Renowned as the early advocates of Digital Economy (DE) almost twenty years ago along with a string of award winning publications namely “Macrowikinomics” (2010), Tapscott has proven to be a household name specialising in disruptive innovations and business strategy. His recent book entitled-“Blockchain Revolution” (2016), has received good reviews from accomplished CEOs and captains of industries globally. Noting that the book is a ‘brilliant combination of history, technology and sociology that covers a comprehensive perspective of the blockchain protocol’. The book engages its readers to entirely rethink about the future and revolutionary insights of a decentralised global financial system. Tapscott described the seven design principles of the blockchain economy namely: networked integrity, distributed power or networks, value creation, cybersecurity, privacy, rights management system and economic inclusion. In each principle, the authors detailed the fundamental concepts. For example by establishing an integrated network, problems can be solved by creating a peer-to-peer networks also known as the ‘trust protocol’. Seemingly, the phenomenal bitcoin network was illustrated as a ‘proof of work’ of an integrated network.

On distributed networks, the authors opined there ought not be a single point of control which eliminates the role of intermediaries. Thereby propagating distributed models of wealth creation. However in such a laissez-faire environment, the challenges lies in mitigating cybercrime in form of spam or denial-of-service attacks. The third principle highlighted on the notion of value creation- propelled by the Internet of Thing (IOT) concept. IOT enables customers to register their devices and assigning them an identify in order to coordinate payments using bitcoin rather than currencies. Creating the trend of different financial instruments from proof of asset authenticity to proof-of-property ownership.

For the fourth, fifth and sixth principles, the Tapscotts wrote on the significance of security and privacy measures. For DE to flourish, platforms need to be hack-proof via asymmetric cryptography or encryption to enable people to control their own data and online identity especially when online transactions. Together these principles depicts that the world today is experiencing the second era of the Digital Economy which is powered by a clever combination of computer engineering, mathematics, cryptography and behavioural economics. The book is a wealth of practical and future insights of new era of economy faced by all nations and citizens worldwide. In hindsight, Tapscot draws the myriad benefits and trade-offs of the digital economy phenomenology. A must-read for enthusiast of innovation and geek entrepreneurship.

Reviewed By Dr Asleena Dato Haji Helmi, October 2017