What could (radical) transparency in the developing world look like? Who are the real winners? And whose share is at stake?

“Transparency as a mechanism for expressing pride.”—Zach Latta

Ever since I met Zach in Saudi Arabia, bonding over a missed shuttle and later at an indian cuisine we couldn’t finish in Riyadh, I’ve been inspired by his strong convictions. This week, I chewed on Zach’s quote and it’s possible manifestations for longer than I hoped I would. In the near future, transparency is a value that’ll stop existing as an option for leaders and their sectors; transparency will be the only way. For the tech world, we could already have a peek at what it could look like in a few years down the road. Beyond transparency taking the form of policies—like the EU General Data Protection Regulation, similar policies would just mean being cunning enough to mine the data anyway. Transparency has a fundamental potential to streamline and add value to consumers through their employees. What has proven effective is when transparency is cultivated by the Founder/CEO; Transparency is a culture game, not a policy one.

Transparency is definitely a game-changer for technology and could break (perhaps for good) industries that thrive on obscurity like insurance, fossil energy and real-estate, just to name a few. For this to happen we must aggressively learn and incrementally build and optimize a transparency-friendly infrastructure. The most advanced form of transparency-for-good I’ve seen to this date has to be Hack Club’s open-sourced finances.

The nonprofit sector is often obscured of its efficiencies (and inefficiencies). With this regard, we’d see Hack Club as fundamental pioneers in going the extra mile with this kind of radical transparency in the non-profit space. This level of transparency would be a great learning launch pad for the rest on the continent.

Ethan Berstein offers an antithesis to transparency: the transparency paradox, arguing that more transparent workspaces become, the more private people become. What mix of transparency and privacy is optimal?

Looking forward to writing an essay covering this next week.