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Version: 1.00.1 © Miikka Leinonen 2008 Translator: Vilja Sormunen Editor: Satu Jussila Photographer: Tuomas Kolehmainen

How GivinG Makes Good Business.

 w w w. s t r at e g y of g i v i n g. c om

Strategy of Giving in a Nutshell:

what canpeople give you?
so, what are you going to give them?

everything you need!

New business models started first on the internet will ultimately affect all industries. The older and the more established the industry, the bigger the change will be.

Tools for Giving
The Strategy of Giving may seem a little naïve and unlikely to result in any real business benefits. But the concepts areanything but naïve. What it is meant to provide is food for thought companies can use to form logical business models that help them achieve strategic goals. The Strategy of Giving is a new way for companies to look at the world around them; it is not magician’s tricks.

“You reap what you sow.” This phrase is found in nearly every culture and language. Basically, it says that the fruits of your laborwill come back to you. Depending on your views, this can be called a law of nature, a pattern of social behavior or just plain karma. Many companies, unfortunately, have not seen the full potential of this law. The Strategy of Giving involves finding ways to harness the power of customers, competitors, employees, potential customers and owners to work for the benefit of a company. In order to getpeople activated, a company must reward people before they have done anything for the company. Giving initiates a movement in the recipient. A company that has generated movement in the recipients can then direct this energy towards benefiting the company’s strategy and vision. A company that gives can quite literally get the world’s resources to work for its benefit. Why would we give awaysomething valuable? Rephrasing the question: what is the cost of getting people to voluntarily come to us and develop our business for us?

Difficulty of Giving
The greatest challenge in the Strategy of Giving lies in harnessing the motion generated within people towards a certain business activity. Giving always creates motion, and the giver receives a gift in return, but it often comes in a formthat is not automatically convertible into cash, such as goodwill. Besides knowing how to create and direct motion, the gift giver also needs to know how to receive a gift coming in return, regardless of its shape and form. Giving can be difficult. For businesses that are relying on old strategies, a leap into the Strategy of Giving is probably extremely difficult. Emotional barriers areunderstandably high.

Internet Leads the Way
Businesses that have assimilated this new way of thinking give people as much as possible without charging them and, consequently, get them to do things for the company. It is easy to categorize businesses that have adopted the Strategy of Giving as web companies with their own rules of engagement. In the early days the web was based on sharing and giving.Companies saw the potential and wanted in on the action. Charging for products and services was almost impossible. So, the model of giving was formed. Many web companies adobted this model as the foundation for their strategy and are some of today’s leading success stories.


So, What is This SoG?
Is it marketing, R&D, management, advertising, crowdsourcing, brand building or what? In fact, itis all these things. The Strategy of Giving is a new way of thinking that encourages companies to interact with the outside world by giving.

what have you given today?


THree sTories of GivinG
 

1 Tom is yawning. when he founded the company a long time ago, he swore to himself that he would stop working as soon as the job got boring. and now it has.
Somewhere deep inside he still...