Social production and the economies of small
I've long been meaning to write a post inspired by Makers and earlier thoughts on production from 100k linked garages..
But John's deck on social production and BBH Labs' recent post on the economies of small do a much better job. So read them.
And BBH Labs:
A final point on size - we’re all used to hearing the number ‘150′ cited as the ‘optimum organizational size’. As the business strategist Tom Peters put it in 1994:
“Arguably, we got away with violating this limit during the age of mass production and hyperspecialization, when the traditional craftsmen’s imagination was subordinated to machine logic. Now, brains, imagination, craft, and whole jobs are once again the order of the day and 150 people, give or take, may again be the right group size.”
In a flat world, might 150 in fact be far too large? Might a network of multiple, much smaller, autonomous teams actually be more commercially successful than a conventional corporate body?
