Published: 4/1/2022
By: Andrew Neyer

Preface

Running a company is hard. It’s even harder to run it well.

Over the years, I have learned from thousands of mistakes. Some small, others not so much. Most of my valuable resources did not fall from the sky but rather from mentors and peers who were kind enough to share their discoveries and wisdom. This kind of transparency is what we need more of in commerce.

For example, our company doesn’t sell light bulbs because we don’t make light bulbs. We’d much rather share our suppliers with you instead of up-charging you. Sharing our vetted suppliers is just one small facet of being an Open Source company.

This is the type of commerce we are most interested in developing on our website and campus. What if commerce was more about the interchange of ideas and not currency? This is, in fact, the alternate definition of the word commerce.

I describe this priority shift as:

We-commerce > e-commerce.

Not everything needs to have a monetary profit to justify an investment. For example, a library, road, or hiking trail, is challenging to make. It comes at an expense to the creator(s). My goal in life is not to take the path of least resistance, but instead to make the path of least resistance for someone else. This comes at a cost. Our IRL (Internal Resource Library) is a prime example of this. It is an investment I may never see a monetary return on and honestly do not expect to. (It was designed exclusively for our Staff and to build a tribe around finding inspiration in everything.) Every week, we take personal time to write Articles no one asked us to write. Then we share them with our Staff to inspire each other. That kind of generosity compounds as we build up a database of things we love.

Objective

Open Source companies commit time and funds to share their discoveries, whether it’s their fabrication contacts, material suppliers, processes, or any other businessy stuff. We want to build more bridges, not bigger moats.

Wanna be an Open Source company?

Do it! Go ahead and scratch off that ® from your logo and swap in the Open Source Ⓢ mark. Don’t have a registered trademark? Even better, drop in the li'l Open Source Ⓢ to give your logo some oomph. This mark appears like a sleight of hand move, but the intent is to give visual power to your logo that is matched with your openness to others. The strength of the Ⓢ mark is it’s unpretentiousness. This characteristic sets stage for sharing your discoveries.

Below you can find all the file assets for getting setup.

Just like ® denotes brand authenticity to the consumer, Ⓢ communicates your company’s commitment to freely sharing its resources. This is what leveraging profit indeed looks like.

There is no certification fee.
There is no review board.
There is no application.
There is only commitment.

Because there is no referee or official, Open Source should be governed in the same fashion as Ultimate’s spirit of the game. Here is a section of The Official Rules of Ultimate, 11th Edition:

“Ultimate has traditionally relied upon a spirit of sportsmanship which places the responsibility for fair play on the player. Highly competitive play is encouraged, but never at the expense of the bond of mutual respect between players, adherence to the agreed-upon rules of the game, or the basic joy of play. Protection of these vital elements serves to eliminate adverse conduct from the ultimate field. Such actions as taunting of opposing players, dangerous aggression, intentional fouling, or other 'win-at-all-costs' behavior are contrary to the spirit of the game and must be avoided by all players.”

The Goal

Increase your business’ profitability percentage by removing waste, documenting the process, and sharing your journey and the resources you uncover. 

Every company will have a different transparency setting. As you succeed in increasing profit margins, increase your transparency in tandem.

“Alley-oop!”

Context

There are so many icons we overlook daily. Opportunity likes to hide in the mundane. The glyphs and logos we notice are merely vehicles for brands, ideals, beliefs, and concepts. The mark themselves are just containers. This is why I don't believe in graphic design; I believe in doing meaningful work that a symbol or graphic can easily recall. Sometimes, graphic design is just an appropriation that someone never considered stealing*.

*Sometimes, we can even steal from ourselves. I first used Ⓢ as the icon and registered mark of Shop (another Andrew Neyer Project) in March 2020, the mark has since been reappropriated. After realizing the mark could have a broader application, Neyer changed the context to represent “Open Source.” By forfeiting the icon’s exclusivity to the project, Shop, the concept can now be used and leveraged by others. See Fig. 3 below for application.

Fig. 3

Stuff By Andrew Neyer revised logotype, 2020
Serving suggestion
Enlarged to show context

In 2020, the Ⓢ mark was first publicly used to replace the ® for Stuff By Andrew Neyer as the new logo online and in all print materials.

Animation by: Luke Lehenbauer