The call-center department at 1-800-Got-Junk gets visitors four evenings every month.

It is Friday morning and the collection teams at 1-800-Got-Junk, a North American waste removal business, are out hauling garage clutter and office cast-offs on to pick-up trucks. Items that are salvageable will be recycled or reused; the rest will be chucked. Back at Got Junk’s Vancouver headquarters, a tour party is engaged in recycling of a different kind: the recycling of ideas. 1-800-Got-Junk invites other organizations in for a privileged view of its inner workings. Rhys Green, who manages Got Junk’s call-center operations, says he and his team have grown used to the fortnightly tours that file past their desks, sometimes stopping to ask questions or eavesdrop on a call. Visitors respect that they are working, he says, and it is nice that a junk business is considered “cool enough” to visit. The only time having an audience intrudes is if the pace starts to slow. “Having people wander around, when [things are just ticking over] can be a little awkward. You kind of think: do I look busy enough? That can be a little strange.” Mr. Green’s team are not alone in this; 1-800-Got-Junk is among a growing number of entrepreneurial businesses that host visitors from other companies, often from different sectors, in search of fresh ideas. Learning by observing does not have to be expensive, say proponents — even bootstrap businesses can organize affordable visits, since they range in cost from nothing to serious money. Zappos, the online shoe retailer, runs free tours and sells add-ons that go from $50 question-and-answer sessions to three-day forays into its quirky culture. Labeled “boot camps”, these include a meeting with founder Tony Hsieh and “No Title” Fred Mossler, and weigh in at $6,000 per person. Three and a half days of workshops and behind-the-scenes tours at a Disney resort, run by the Disney Institute, Disney’s professional development arm, costs about $4,200. Sharing knowhow may help open doors. Brian Scudamore, who founded Got Junk in 1989, says the ideas that visitors share with his business make the effort worthwhile. “Someone on a tour said: ‘Do you guys do affiliate marketing?’ At the time, I didn’t really know what it was, so they got their marketing team to walk us through the process and the results have been fantastic.” Not all companies are happy with visitors. At Gold Medal Service, a New Jersey-based home services company, competitors are not welcome after an employee caused such an impression on a rival taking its tour that it offered him a job. “Now, we don’t let in companies that compete in our backyard,” says co-founder Mike Agugliaro.