Dusty: There are a lot of network organizations forming that approach what you are talking about. But I don't know of any for profit examples that are truely "leaderless". The Institute for the Future is experimenting with a "leader light" model. In theory all the management animals at IFTF are equal, but some are more equal at any given time. Instead of president, they have an executive director with much less authority than a traditional president. The idea is to rotate this job among a group called the "lead team". This concept is relatively new, so it is too early to tell how it will work. But since it is based on the academic department model, it is hard to be optomistic about it.
On whether or not the barbell is good for the consumer I think the answer is clearly yes. Take the beer industry for example. In 1980 there were 44 commercial breweries in the US and the 5 largest had about 70% marketshare. Today there are over 1400 commercial breweries and with the recent merger of SAB-Miller and Coors the top 2 have about 78% market share. As consumers we now have more much more choice, and while the big guys have more share they also have less pricing power because of all the smaller brewers (and global competitors). So as consumers we win, but some argue as people we lose in this scenario. Robert Reich's newest book is Supercapitalism and he argues that while we are winning as consumers and investors, we are losing as individuals and society. NPR has a good review summarizing the book at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14848767 I don't see anyway for your utopian world to happen over the next decade or two. The consolidation forces are simply too strong. Your utopian piece that is happening is small businesses are thriving and gaining share in terms of the overall US (and global) economic pie. This trend should continue for at least the next decade or so. Steve On Oct 17, 11:02 pm, Dusty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I hear ya' xray! :) > > Steve, > Thanks again for the reply and for the blog links! > > I think you make good points about the difficulty of sustaining a > "leaderless" organizations. > > Though difficult, it seems plausible that such an organization could > succeed. You've pointed out several resources on the topic in general. > Do you know of any communities that are exploring the nuts and bolts > of creating a profitable leaderless organizations? Kind-of a "where > the rubber meets the road" community on "profitable leaderless > organizations" similar to our coworking community. > > Perhaps such a community would explore pure and hybrid models? > > Regarding the barbell industry structure. I can easily imagine that > happening. My next thought is, is that good or bad for the consumer? I > can imagine lots of great things coming from small business growth. > But what about things like cable, or cell phone providers. Small > business won't really be able to compete in that market and big > business won't have any medium sized geographic specific competition. > > I think my utopian world would have small, med, and large business on > a linear graph with small businesses having the largest piece of the > economic pie, followed by med, then large. How do we make that > happen? ;) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
