Eric Karjaluoto has written a book called Speak Human. It’s all about how to be small and personal in your approach to business. He laments the outsize presence of the very largest corporate brands:
Odd as it may sound, I want Finnish gas stations in Finland. I don’t want a Starbucks in the Forbidden City (others felt similarly, which seemingly influenced its closure in 2007). I dread the notion of boring, homogenized Budweiser being equated as the “king of beers.”
And explains how the quick decision-making in a small company can outmaneuver the bureaucracy likely to slow down large one:
Let’s say you have a little software company that competes with one of Microsoft’s products. Along comes a new innovation that you choose to implement in your application. All you have to do is get down to work. Sure, Microsoft has nearly 90,000 people to do the same, but do you think it’s really that easy? How many meetings, proposals, surveys, and assessments need to happen before a single line of code is written? It’s like arranging a get-together: a dinner for two is easy, a gathering of 12 friends is no big deal, but planning a wedding for 100? That’s a kind of torture.
But what about big companies? Karjaluoto says thinking small can work for them too, but they have their work cut out for them, especially if they need to change negative perceptions.
Buy the paperback or read online for free (a new chapter is published every few weeks).
