Rajesh Jain writes about his mental mode of an ‘open source company’. I find myself fascinated by the idea of a truly transparent company. I find myself enjoying reading work weblogs even more than personal weblogs in part because for many of them it humanizes the company whether it’s a company of 55,000 like Microsoft or a company of 2 like Ranchero. Of course, I don’t kid myself that one person’s view is reality… but it’s more than I would know otherwise. I have not read much of David Brin’s work on transparency, but I know he was speaking more broadly than just about the corporate world. Still, transparency has other meanings/intents… think about the growing (temporary?) push towards transparency in accounting, given the latest wave of scandals. Can you effectively run a small company out in the open? Yes. A medium-size company? Hmmm… A large company? No one has had time to even attempt it yet.