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Today on my daily walk through the web, I decided to start counting the number of startups, and new approaches, to business I could find. I stopped counting well beyond 1000, for lack of time, and grossly overgeneralized that there are literally an exponential number of startup companies and organizations beginning this year. What does it matter? I remember in the middle of my career at IBM hearing Carlotta Perez speak about micro business and micro organizations being the wave of the future, not small to medium but literally micro, one or two employees. It struck me at that time the impact would be tremendous. My experience in aviation came to mind, when airlines began operating smaller aircraft in place of "heavies" as we called them.....no one planned for the number of increased transactions and interactions, crowded airspace, overtaxed infrastructure and the like. I believe micro business will have major impact on the global economy and global infrastructure. Again what does it matter? The upside is the web, with new and ever growing social applications and communities popping up, they may well become the "glue" that holds it all together.
We often prodded IBM in those days to pay attention to micro businesses, but frankly that was like asking a Cruise ship to look out for Z boats. If you add it all up: Social Revolution (a very organized and pragmatic,open source approach is going on!!http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/03/05/altimeter-report-the-18-use-cases-of-social-crm-the-new-rules-of-relationship-management/), Micro businesses, Micro Financing (here is the one I support Kiva-- and I'm proud to say MY MICRO COMPANIES HAVE PAID ME BACK IN FULL at $8.33 a payment, in for many more rounds of funding!) open collaboration equals the WAVE OF THE PRESENT AND THE TSUNAMI OF THE FUTURE! Here's the math: social revolution (Exponential Number) + Micro Business (Exponential Number) + Micro Finance (Finite, small increments) + Open Collaboration (Exponential Number) = Exponential Business (startups and beyond). These organizations are working on the fringe of the monolithic business world and moving at the "speed of data". (Even dial up in Burkina Fasa Africa is probably faster than the top down decision processes of the monolithic companies started in the past 100 years!) So it deserves mention if your thinking about starting an organization, look for micro financing, build it on the social fabric of the web and stick to the open collaboration approach. Hats off to Altimeter Group for their work and their OPEN POLICY. Check out e426.org if you want to see open people who practice open and innovative collaboration.
