The New Small

Posted by Jim Van on June 24, 2011 under entrepreneur, mobility, small business | 2 Comments to Read

I spent the past weekend at the beach, and part of my summer reading is a terrific book by Phil Simon called ‘The New Small’. If you’re a small (<30, IMHO) business, it beehooves you to read this tome. It's decidedly NOT geek-speak, and is really written for the small business owner or manager or someone who's considering a break from the politics and hegemony of cublicle city.

This company wasn’t included in the book, and they certainly are no longer small, but back in the day, they did something along the lines of what some of the companies that Simon outlines in his book. In EMC’s early days, they were a printed circuit board distributor. At one point, things were so bleak in that space that they morphed into an office furniture distributor. Along the way, they acquired two very talented people, one an Israeli engineer and the other a business guru. Between the two, the company grew to eventually employ 22,000 people (before the dot com bust), and were so agile in the early days, that they drew rings around IBM’s data storage business and became not only the world leader in the storage hardware space, but the absolute darling of Wall Street in the 90′s. Stock splits were so common that some people greeted them with a yawn. Many millionaires were made.

The bottom line: EMC would’ve never become that giant if they, back in the early days, hadn’t had the agility and the foresight to recognize technology and systems for what they were, and to adopt those that helped them move forward.

As Simon points out in this book, most to the big companies, of which EMC is one, have become bloated and political and pretty process-bound. I mark the date as the date of EMC’s acquisition of Data General Corp. in 1999, which turned out to be a stale twinkie on which the company nearly choked. Unable to turn the corporate ship swiftly, they soon became victims of the dot com implosion, laying off thousands of employees in wave after wave between 2001 and 2004 (I stopped paying attention after that). However, the company eventually morphed into a more software-centric operation, and is doing ok today.

Anyways, as always, I digress. I mention EMC because I was there during some explosive growth and remember what it was like as a smaller company, and was reminded of several things while reading ‘The New Small’

Back to ‘The New Small’, Simon points out enablers, and does case studies of several companies from a diverse group that he carefully selected who seem to be doing it right.

You can grab a free e-book sample of trhe beginning of the book, which in itself is compelling reading, IMHO at http://www.amazon.com. You’ll need a kindle, or kindle for PC,iPhone/iPad or Android, but I hope the little taste entices you to spend the staggering $8-$10 to get into the meat of the book. It’s also available in print for you old fashioned types:) And, there’s a great blog going at http://www.thenewsmall.com. You should check it out.