Why I'm Making My IP Open Source
Tools improve when we open them up to public scrutiny.
Today I have something to give you. No strings attached. I’m making all of the frameworks, tools, worksheets, and other IP I use in my consulting work free and available to the public.
Why am I doing this?
Last week, I wrote about the need to think critically about what constitutes “quality” work today. As AI is increasingly able to generate content (whether that’s a strategy deck, an essay, a marketing campaign, it doesn’t matter) that possesses the guise of quality, understanding what’s truly useful and what’s merely theater is ever more important.
If it’s harder to judge quality on its face, we need another approach.
One way we could do that is by applying the forces of evolution and natural selection. When exposed to a harsh environment, some species survive. They possess whatever abilities are required to sustain themselves. Other species die off. What’s more is that some species can adapt as their environment changes. They develop resistance to diseases, can survive in harsher climates, or reproduce more successfully. More adaptive species survive; less adaptive ones do not.
The same is true for the IP that consultants use.
A framework, for example, that sits within the confines of a single consulting practice will only be trotted out occasionally to be exposed to the elements. With relatively little stimulus from its environment, it will adapt slowly. If it adapts at all. This is suboptimal for clients, and by extension, the consultant.
But a framework exposed to public scrutiny will not experience such a stale existence. Does it provide little utility, or worse, orient thinking in the wrong direction? All the better to recognize that early and kill it off. Are there ways it can be improved? Can it inspire other works? Can its users learn from each other about its benefits and limitations? When answers to those questions arrive faster, everyone benefits.
By sharing my IP publicly, as an open-source library, I hope to expose it to such a level of scrutiny, and in the process, make some small contribution to the quality of consulting work that’s practiced in the harsh ecosystem of business.
I’ve published four resources so far:
The Problem Validation Worksheet: For validating whether a market problem is worth building a strategy around before committing to it.
The Cross-Dept Bearing Check: A quarterly exercise for identifying and prioritizing the initiatives your team needs to pursue to support its category strategy.
The Brand Narrative Spine Worksheet: For organizing and aligning a team on the core structure of a brand narrative before drafting it in full.
The Strategic Narrative Feedback Form: A questionnaire for surfacing internal alignment and dissent on a draft strategic narrative before it’s finalized.
As I continue to make more resources ready for public consumption, I’ll add them to the library and share them with you here, as a subscriber.
In the meantime, I’d love your feedback. What was useful? What wasn’t? What questions or ideas do these resources inspire?
Let’s let evolution do its thing.
John Rougeux is the founder of Flag & Frontier, a strategy consultancy that helps executive teams align around their strategy and narrative when the future is up for grabs.