In a discussion with OPEN Forum®'s Marcy Shinder, Seth Godin discussed how entrepreneurs are reacting to the changing economy and how these times may represent a golden opportunity for savvy business owners.
He made the following key comment:
“The biggest single difference is that the whole factory model is dead – the mindset that says that the purpose of the corporation is to raise money and build a factory, and the purpose of the factory is to make lots of stuff that people will buy. That’s gone, it’s over. The way we train, the people we hire, the products we make, the way we sell them – is approached in a different way now. The new paradigm is two or three guys, setting up a couple of desks and laptops in their garage, conquering their own corner of the web, and maybe making $1 million or more in their first year. All the brains and emotion are migrating to service-related businesses that stress their horizontality rather than verticality. It’s a mass-customization, high-bandwidth connectivity kind of paradigm.”
So, have you blown up your factory? Have you downsized to a “garage enterprise”? Are you migrating to service-related business? Have you conquered your corner of the web?
So in homage to the poet, Vachel Linsday (1879-1931), I especially like the irony of Yahoo tricks!
Factory windows are always broken.
Somebody's always throwing bricks,
Somebody's always heaving cinders,
Playing ugly Yahoo tricks.
Factory windows are always broken.
Other windows are let alone.
No one throws through the chapel-window
The bitter, snarling, derisive stone.
Factory windows are always broken.
Something or other is going wrong.
Something is rotten--I think, in Denmark.
End of factory-window song.
