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

Don Tapscott (Author), David Ticoll (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 2003

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 & 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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The idea behind the sexy title is that information technology, chiefly the Internet, puts corporate misbehavior on display as never before. Thanks to the Web, consumers can compare product info, disgruntled employees and whistleblowers can air dirty laundry and upload embarrassing documents, investors can get wind of financial shenanigans and activists of all stripes are able to publicize a company's environmental and social transgressions. When mobilized, these hawk-eyed "accountability webs" precipitate "vortex states" that send a company's reputation, and maybe its business, spiraling down the drain. To head off such PR catastrophes, the authors recommend a policy of "transparency," whereby companies disclose all possible information, a practice they feel boosts employee morale and performance, facilitates business partnerships, and helps responsible corporations attract socially conscious consumers and investors. Tapscott and Ticoll, authors of Digital Capital: Harnessing the Power of Business Webs, examine such obstacles to transparency as gene patenting and overextended copyrights, and discuss the misdeeds and controversies surrounding corporate megaliths like McDonalds and Coca-Cola. The book is really a restatement of the new "corporate sustainability vogue in management theory, which insists that social and environmental responsibility benefit the bottom line. The authors' sometimes turgid presentation, peppered with bewildering diagrams, gives it a New Economy gloss by invoking information theory, "network effects" and fulsome praise of knowledge workers and the Net Generation, for whom life is "an ongoing, massive multi-media research project." The premise, that the flow of information compels corporate accountability, is a dubious one; as the authors acknowledge, there was information aplenty about the problems at Enron and Worldcom, but these companies were never called to account until they went bankrupt. Still, high-minded executives will find much to enlighten and encourage them.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Malcolm Gladwell Author of The Tipping Point The Naked Corporation argues, beautifully and persuasively, that there is no contradiction between good business and the values of honesty and openness. This book belongs in the briefcase of every right-thinking manager in the country.

A. G. Lafley Chairman, President and Chief Executive, Procter & Gamble Don Tapscott and David Ticoll hit the bull's-eye with The Naked Corporation. The demand for openness and candor has never been greater. The Naked Corporation is a leadership tool kit for turning the relentless demand for transparency from threat to advantage.

Robert A. G. Monks Author of The New Global Investors, coauthor of Power and Accountability and Watching the Watchers Tapscott and Ticoll show, with abundant recent cogent examples, how concealment of truth is at the core of many corporate problems. Their solution is straightforward, clearly written, and compelling. You should read this book. More, you should buy it, as you will want to refer to it frequently.

Dr. Eric Schmidt Chairman and CEO, Google, Inc. They've done it again. Tapscott and Ticoll's capacity to combine a fresh and authentic perspective with real world data has once again opened the aperture on our emerging networked economy. A brilliant work.

Klaus Schwab Founder and President, World Economic Forum We need a corporate philosophy for the twenty-first century. Tapscott and Ticoll's book The Naked Corporation provides this -- not only the rationale for a transparent corporation but also the principles of leadership in an open world.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (September 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743246500
• ISBN-13: 978-0743246507
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,109,969 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a great book, June 11, 2004

By 

Will Rodriguez (Wellington, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business (Hardcover)

This is a very good book which has opened my eyes into looking for companies that are honest and transparent with their customers, shareholders and employees. This book calls companies to stop hidding behind secrets that destroy corporations (Enron and others) and start being transparent, by providing informaiton to your customers, shareholders and employees. Companies need to show that they are responsible to the environment, to their stakeholders and other corporations. This book is calling companies to be ethical in their daily transactions and gives example after example of corporations who have fallen because they tried to hide the truth. This book shows that we need strong ethical people to run todays corporations and we as investors need to reward companies who are starting to become transparent. At the same time we need to punish companies who are not taking responsibility for their actions and wrong doings. This book also points out that most investors are blind with their investments and don't even realize what their largest investment is invested in (for most people their largest investment is their pension plan, and I admit I don't know what mine is invested in). This is a very good book and has opened my eyes to at least see what's going on out there and provided me with the tools to do some research and make sure I reward companies that are making an effort to save our environment and be honest with employee's, investors, stakeholders, and customers. The one question I have is are we raising a generation that will be able to have the
qualities needed to run the corporations of tomorrow... Great book...

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Be The Business, February 12, 2004

By 

David Brett (New Westminster, British Columbia Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business (Hardcover)

Tapscott and Ticoll have written another very detailed, practical and profound book about business that shows their knack for zeroing in on the heart of a momentous change that is stirring in the world and explaining it all clearly and completely. At the heart of The Naked Corporation is the notion that shareholders and other stakeholders are empowered by technology to know more and more about organizations faster and faster, which in turn greatly emboldens them to take action based on their new knowledge. In other words, perhaps the old adage "there's one born every minute" needs updating. They're still being born, but hopefully now only a few per hour? Corporations "getting naked" can't be good news for marketing departments. Their job can no longer be about creating a nice rosy image; companies and products must be the image - for real. Yikes...David Brett, Founder, Knexa.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Critical "Call to Arms" for Transparency and Ethics, December 1, 2003

By 

Del Langdon (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business (Hardcover)

Tapscott and Ticoll launched the Digital 4Sight research program two years before the buzz of ethical misconduct by Enron, Tyco, Woldcom, Arthur Andersen and others finally set off alarm bells and made front-page headlines. Once again, they are ahead of the curve in accurately predicting and understanding critical businesss and cultural shifts that have enormous impact. Their thesis that greater transparency is the core of the solution seems like a "no brainer". However, the response of most corporations seems to be shallowly focused on compliance with S-OX regulations--missing the point of the exercise. The authors argue that this is the time to rethink the fundamental values and leadership of the corporation in context of external and internal stakeholders. It is heartening to see examples of leaders that live and manage to their values and take the bold steps to go beyond focus on their quarterly financial results and regulatory compliance. This book convincingly outlines both the business rationale and the path to a return of trust and loyalty in the instituions we invest in, do business with, work with/for. I see light at the end of this very dark tunnel in the evoluion of business and personal conduct, only if we all take action and accountability.