In ToB Thinking at Large and Small Companies, I analyzed the ToB strategy of large companies in some detail; this post supplements the thinking on small companies’ ToB strategy from another angle. 1. What Is a ToB Service A commercial company usually maintains at least one value chain and makes its profit from it.

Adobe acquired Magento for $1.67 billion, Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion, IBM acquired Red Hat for $34 billion — open source turns out to be a good business too. This article is mainly a record of, and some thoughts about, open source. 1. What Open Source Is 1.1 History In 1969, Bell Labs shared the Unix source code with the community, laying an important foundation for open source.

1. Understanding ToB It is only because money has become harder and harder to make from ToC that ToB has flourished. The era in which a single idea could be turned into a good product and ultimately accepted by everyone has been crushed beneath the wheels. In the early days of the internet, a single portal directory made Sohu, a single chat tool made Tencent, and even hao123 — nothing more than a handful of jump pages — sold for tens of millions.