Radical Openness: Towards a Theory of Co(labor)ation

Abstract

The concept of radical openness is a concept that I coined as a result of a series of published articles and books on the concept of openness over the last five years. In particular, working with colleagues like Peter Roberts, I had tried to rework what we called „the virtues of openness” linking it to the development of scientific communication, the reinvention of the public good and the constitution of the global knowledge commons (Peters and Roberts 2011). We put the case for the creation of a new set of rights in a transformed global context of the „knowledge economy”, that is, universal rights to knowledge and education. In this perspective, I argue that education needs to be reconsidered as a global public good, with the struggle for equality at its center. By charting various conceptual shifts, I had previously distinguished between three discourses of the ,knowledge economy‘: the ,learning economy‘, the ,creative economy‘, and the ,open knowledge economy‘, each with its specific conceptions of knowledge and economy (Peters 2010a).

This paper was delivered as an invited keynote to International Symposium on „The Creative University” at „Organization and Newness” Conference , Commission Organizational Education , German Educational Research Association (GERA) in cooperation with Philipps University Marburg, February 28th & March 1st, 2013 under the title „Radical Openness: Creative institutions, creative labor and the logic of public organizations in cognitive capitalism”. See the lecture presentation on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ5zb8gyAr4&feature=share&list=PLUI8E0qsJLCAPvvcct6Y8Y2Y7h_JYBb2O. I wish to express my thanks to Prof Susanne Maria Weber for organizing and inviting me to this important conference and to German Research Foundation (DFG) for providing funding support.