The Future of (Small) Business
Most successful small businesses are tremendously well-focused organizations that tend to do one thing and (at least try) to do it really well. The print shop down the street? They print things. The Italian place on 5th? They make Italian food. The lawyer down the street? Take a guess.
But, in the future, the business world might look a little different. What if a business still stuck to doing its one thing well, but met the right people that would do other things for them so that they could do more, but with less?
Some of this is happening already. Whereas Apple might have made its hardware in the US twenty years ago, today you’ll almost certainly find “Made in China” neatly engraved somewhere on the bottom of each of its products. Some people probably think that Apple makes these things, but the truth is that a factory in China makes these things (but they follow Apple’s instructions).
This sort of thing has become commonplace with outsourcing, but I have a hunch that we’re experiencing the dawn of an age where partnerships that net greater capabilities and stronger presences won’t be confined to the other side of the world, but rather a way of life right here at home.
On January 1st, Blend is going to announce some very big changes to the way we do things. This model is one of them. From an economic perspective, very few businesses can reasonably do anything and everything and still be good at all of them. But, they can specialize and trade to do lots of things and do all of them very, very well. That’s exactly what we’re going to do. We’re still a small agency, but by partnering with other agencies, we can easily do more with less. We can offer full-service printing for our clients even if we don’t print a single thing in-house. We can shoot a beautiful video even if we don’t even own a camera. And you can too.
The future of small business looks a lot like this.
Of course, it’s not entirely new. What is new, however, is taking this concept and finding a way to scale it. One agency, Razorfish, I believe has done just that. In fact, they even have a partnerships section of their website alongside a form to become a partner too.
The reason is simple. If companies all do what they do best and trade with one another, they’ll all be better off. If they don’t trade, they’ll sub-optimize and their customers won’t be as happy (and, in turn, the companies won’t be as successful).
Let’s leap together and join hands to do more than ever before, with less than we’d ever thought possible.
If you’d like to partner with Blend, I’d love to hear from you. My e-mail address is patrick@blenditbetter.com.
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