A frame I like for proprietary vs open systems: tech islands.

When a space is new, being in a tech island with a proprietary advantage lets you move faster and stay ahead of competitor.

The only way to develop and keep that edge is to be proprietary, an island.

But at some point (possibly a long time in the future) the rest of the ecosystem will catch up.

When your previously differentiated proprietary technology becomes a commodity, you'll be trapped.

At this point, it's very very hard to get off the island.

Getting off the island is a massive one-time cost, and that cost rises the longer you stay on the island.

If you do get off the island, you might not make it, and will be actively behind the rest of the ecosystem, at a disadvantage.

Everything will feel weird and foreign and hard to understand.

You'll have to shift your basis of competition to something else.

And there will always be a contingent within the organization that points out that getting off the island will give up your basis of competition and that a better option is to try to regain the advantage by doubling down on the proprietary tech.

But this cannot work.

The non-linear swarm of innovation in the ecosystem will have beaten your linear proprietary investment, and will now dominate.

Still, this argument will be persuasive enough to make the organization conflicted about taking the leap.

Getting off the island will be an important but never urgent decision, so you'll likely wait until staying on the island is an existential, obvious threat, and the danger of making the switch is higher than ever before.