Small vs Big / Creative, Flexible, Agile vs Faster, Better, Cheaper…?

Big business announces a New Management Paradigm. Faster, Better, Cheaper… !! The small business announces Viral, Buzz, Word of Mouth…

The big ones mimic to be small… to gain credibility, the small ones mimic the big ones for the same reasons… so confusing. Whome can we trust, we cannot trust what we see… etc. etc. etc. vicious circles everywhere…and efforts everywhere to regain credibility by all means, ruthless methods in the same diguise as diligent methods… wolves in sheep’s clothing… yes? no? who knows?

Underneath I quote an article from the Neue Züricher Zeitung www.nzz.ch that led me into temptation to hypothesize: »Do the big companies mimic the small ones to regain their clients’ confidence, do they promote the process of web 2.0 developing into a big bubble that’s about to implode?« I came across the following sentence:

»Not the size of the company is of any importance for its innovative output, but its agility.«

Good morning 21st century … how old are you?

This quote was uttered by Barbara Kux, one of the CEOs of Philips
Electronics, hereby explicitly announcing the change of a crucial management
paradigm. Isn’t it a fundamental premise for all small business to survive: the agility and flexibility principle?

Agility, yes, some weeks ago this was exactly the term put up for discussion on the brains-on-fire blog’s weekly brain storming sessions http://brainsonfire.com/blog/curiosity-team-thoughts-for-the-weekend/. Every week there is a call for memories, ideas, images, sounds, smells, people, characters, animals, etc., etc., etc. that come to mind when you hear the repsective word, weeks ago it was agility. Brains on fire address to the small ones, those, who need creativity, good ideas, good stories so badly to survive.

Do we small ones, and, biestmilch is a very small business, have anything in common with the big ones, I asked myself today. Isn’t it just another story, are those gigants following different rules than we do? Are the small ones perhaps ahead of change and do the big ones adopt to change by incorporating (eating) successful small ones?
Why appear CEO declarations of the business gigants often that trivial? Is it because it is all about politics and policy, and not about the »real business«? Small businesses need to do their job, there is rarely time for politics. If it comes to the point where we start to do politics, and are seriously considered by other politicians, does this actually mean that we are not small anymore?

Small business against the current, ahead of change!

This line refers to another quote in the same article, expressed by Ola Rollén from Hexagon and Leica Geosystems who said that ideas are the foundation of success.
I don’t believe it anymore. Excuse me, wrong perspective! Ideas don’t have to pay off, they are exploited, yes, of course, this is the understandable perspective of the CEO, exploitation! He says ideas grow out of an organized chaos, and, companies need to nurture such people who are nonconformists. Rollén applies the same approach to human ressources as to natural ressources. One has to keep this in mind, if one is a »deliveryman« of ideas.