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Poetic Business

Loved the poetic language HBR uses to describe the betrayal perpetrated by Yahoo on its Flickr users. The travesty of customer trust is described thusly :

What Yahoo is doing just isn’t what we had in mind when we put our photos under the CC-BY license. We were trying to contribute to our culture in some small way. We were participating in the gift economy. We were sharing.

Now Yahoo has inserted itself into our enchanted triangle. The connections among the vertices of that triangle had been characterized by sharing and goodwill. But Yahoo has turned our photos − our gifts − into commodities and reduced them to their cash value.

Was trying to imagine using language such as the above in work communication. Here is one way I can think of using it in my local context "Now Org X has inserted itself into our enchanted triangle. The connection among the vertices of that triangle had been characterized by collaboration and agility. But Org X has turned our creative energy - our ideas - into tasks and reduced them to their billable hour value" 

Needless to say whoever wrote such a mail would get some serious attention from the powers that be. They could not cite inspiration from HBR to explain their poetic excesses away.

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