E-M8 Entrepreneurial Management for Eternal Mission

Historically, the thought has been: build the organization so big that it can withstand the storms of the open seas, maximize the economies of scale. Yet, in today’s waters of rapid change a small manevrable rafts do better than large ships. This is the helical change over business life time, when idustires are experienceing rapid growth, when they are in unpredicatable markets of rapid decline and underwater reefs, being small is often a tremendous advantage.

Lilliputs, in their coordinated attack can even capture a giant. They just need to work with each other. They can actually act like a giant, through combining their efforts. The power of lilliputs is that they are impossible to completely eliminate, since they can much better hide. Lilliputs have the ability to snick up. They do not have to fight fair. They can even get away with murder. They are small, and that is their greatest advantage.

Yet, we should not be too quick to abandon the large ships in favor of rafts. There is a huge benefit to the  organizations being large, when used wisely or when the markets are deep and predictable. Large organizations have the scale to be able to do really well in those markets. Nothing is more powerful than a coordinated efforts of the giants and the lilliputs, since each can focus on doing things that the other simply cannot do. 

The solution is quite simple, it is in building diverse fleets, not just a solitary gigantic ship. If instead of trying to grow one business, once the business has reached the size that is appropriate to a given market we move on to growing a whole different business, rather than trying to make the same business suitable for a bunch of markets, soon we will have a fleet of businesses that can come to each other’s aid and coordinate efforts for the common benefit. Japanese call it keiretsu, they are worth studying even in spite of recent Japanese economic struggles.

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