“In many cases, your workers are your market. Come out of the bunker once in a while and see what they're up to – it could be your future. Sometime soon, companies will have to open up significant portions of their intranets while still protecting their few genuine secrets in order to create relationships with the market rather than barriers against them. Otherwise they're saying in effect, 'We know everything we need to know. Why would should we look beyond our own borders?' That's just plain wrong and everybody knows it - especially your workers and your customers. Companies that

Book cover via Amazon

are actually communicating with online markets have flung the doors wide open. They are constantly searching for solid information they can share with customers and prospects via the web and FTP sites, email lists, phone calls, whatever it takes. They are not half as concerned with protecting their data with how much information they can give away. That's how they stay in touch - stay competitive. Keep market attention from drifting to competitors. Such companies are creating a new kind of corporate identity based not on the repetitive advertising needed to create brand awareness but on substantive personalized communications. The question is whether, as a company, you can afford to have more than an advertising jingle persona. Can you put yourself out there; say what you think in your voice? Present who you really are; show what you really care about? Do you have any genuine passion to share? Can you deal with such honesty? Such exposure? Human beings are often magnificent in this regard while companies, frankly, tend to suck. For most large corporations even considering these questions, and they're being forced to do so by both internet and intranet, is about as exciting as the offer of an experimental brain transplant. But the future looks dismal only to companies that are spooked by the prospect of coming in out of the cold. Those at highest risk aren't wonderful places to be working in at any level today. Their future could be bright if they'd just decide to stop being prisons with nasty wardens.”

-- The Cluetrain Manifesto ~ The End of Business as Usual

Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger