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Why Small Companies Will Win in This Economy

• ggchappell 18y ago
  There are some worthwhile ideas in this article, but I have a slightly different take on them. The sentence near the end, "Trust is the new competitive advantage." is the main point. And he says small companies tend to have the advantage as far as trust goes. But, while that is generally true, it might be looked at as a challenge for large companies. As I see it, large companies have two advantages: (1) they can take advantage of economies of scale, and (2) when they figure out how to do something right, they can apply their knowledge very widely. For an example of #2, consider Joel Spolsky's statement about Big Macs: "The secret of Big Macs is that they're not very good, but every one is not very good in exactly the same way." If someone is in an unfamiliar area, other restaurants may offer the possibility of better food, but McDonald's has them beat on trust: when you go to McDonald's, you know exactly what you are going to get. So, rather than say that trust being an advantage, means that small companies are going to win, we might say that, in order to be competitive in this economy, large companies need to figure out trust. And, for better or worse, the ones that do figure it out, might very well beat the small companies hands down.