The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business

If you have to be naked, you had better be buff. We are entering an extraordinary age of transparency, where businesses must for the first time make themselves clearly visible to shareholders, customers, employees, partners, and society. Financial data, employee grievances, internal memos, environmental disasters, product weaknesses, international protests, scandals and policies, good news and bad; all can be seen by anyone who knows where to look. Welcome to the world of the naked corporation. Transparency is revolutionizing every aspect of our economy and its industries and forcing firms to rethink their fundamental values.

Don Tapscott, bestselling author and one of the most sought after strategists and speakers in the business world, is famous for seeing into the future and pointing out both its forest and its trees. David Ticoll, visionary researcher, columnist, and consultant, has identified countless breakthrough trends at the intersection of technology and business strategy. These two longtime collaborators now offer a brilliant guide to the new age of openness. In The Naked Corporation, they explain how the new transparency has caused a power shift toward customers, employees, shareholders, and other stakeholders; how and where information has exploded; and how corporations across many industries have seized on transparency not as a challenge but as an opportunity.

Drawing on such examples as Chiquita's total turnaround on matters of ethics, to Shell Oil's reinvention of itself as an environmentally focused business, to Johnson and Johnson's longstanding and carefully nurtured reputation as a company worthy of trust — as well as little-known examples from pharmaceuticals, insurance, high technology, and financial services — Tapscott and Ticoll offer invaluable advice on how to lead the new age, rather than simply react to it.

The Naked Corporation is a book for managers, employees, investors, customers, and anyone who cares about the future of the corporation and society. A new age is upon us, and you can either work with it and thrive, or fight it and die.

We are entering an extraordinary age of openness, where business must--for the first time--make themselves clearly visible to shareholders, customers, employees, partners, and society. Financial data, employee grievances, internal memos, environmental disasters, product weaknesses, international protests, scandals, and policies; good news and bad; all can be seen by anyone who knows where to look. The new world of transparency is revolutionizing every aspect of our economy and its industries and forcing firms to rethink their fundamental values. Some companies and employees are thriving in this new world, others are struggling to stay afloat. Few understand how far the revolution will take us, and what to do about it. Don Tapscott, bestselling author and one of the most sought-after speakers in the business world, is famous for seeing into the future and pointing out both its forest and its trees. Tapscott and his longtime collaborator David Ticoll now offer a brilliant guide to the new age of openness. In "The Naked Corporation, they explain how the new transparency has caused a power shift toward customers and employees; how, and where, information has exploded; and how corporations across many industries have seized on transparency not as a challenge but as an opportunity. "The Naked Corporation is a book for managers, employees, investors, customers, and anyone who cares about the future of the corporation. It defines not only the key issues of the new transparency, but explains how everyone can use transparency to his advantage.

Don Tapscott is recognized as one of the leading business thinkers of our time. He authored several of the bestselling books of the last decade, including Paradigm Shift, The Digital Economy, and Growing Up Digital.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I

The Transparency Imperative

1. The Naked Corporation

2. Transparency Versus Opacity: The Battle

3. The Open Enterprise

Part II

When Stakeholders Can See

4. Whistleblowers and Other Employees

5. Transparency Among Business Partners

6. Customers in a Transparent World

7. Communities

8. The Owners of the Firm

Part III

Being Open

9. Harnessing the Power

10. Breaching the Crisis of Leadership

Notes

Index