There is a lot to be said for entrepreneurship, and keeping a company small, lean, and hungry. After all, it’s tough to innovate within a big business, where simply maintaining the status quo can eat up the bulk of the company’s time and resources. Why do you think that so many significant techonological innovations come out of start up companies? Because they are simply more willing to take the risk.
Today, Seth Godin wrote about how new companies, the ones who assume more risks, can beat out older organizations that may have grown bloated with success or become set in their ways. He says:
“They don’t have it (meaning the assets that the older, financially better off companies have), though, so they improvise. They lean into the market. They give customers what they want, and embrace technology and new ideas because they have no other choice. The green curve (the larger older companies), on the other hand, is filled with people who feel helpless. They feel like the organization is aligned against them, aligned to fail, all because the status quo is so powerful.”
Do you have a startup or even a basic business plan that could use some of the funding and resources that more established companies have, but you still want to maintain that healthy entrepreneurial drive? Enter the Knight News Challenge and you could win funding and support for your fledgling business. Hey, it’s pretty low risk (all you have to invest is the time it takes you to develop a proposal), and the rewards could be immense (up to $500,000 worth of funds).
Seth doesn’t quite hang folks who work for a big company out to dry though – there is hope for them yet. He claims that sometimes, “just often enough to give the dinosaurs a shred of hope, someone (not often the CEO) stands up and says, “follow me!” And the organization does.” The moral of the story? Don’t be afraid to rock the boat.
The Knight News Challenge Information Blog 