Sohodojo’s Omidyar.net Blog

Sohodojo Jim and Timlynn said:

For those who might be interested in digging deeper into the insights that Mark has raised in his excellent post, we encourage you to read an installment of The Nanocorp Primer first published in May of 2000: Role/Actor Scenario Patterns: The A-Team and the Sandbox, subtitled A Pattern to Enable Nanocorp Replication (AKA New Economy Job Creation). (That ‘New Economy’ phrase sure dates this piece doesn’t it!)

Would like to look into this — is it available?

Another failure mitigating factor is that a nanocorp (the networked solo or family-based entrepreneur) is very likely to be a concurrent rather than a serial entrepreneur, that is, to live what Charles Handy calls a Portfolio Life. In this way, the Portfolio Life nanocorp avoids the catastrophic meltdown of having ‘all your eggs in one basket’ or business.

Germany is known for its rather large number of Mittelstand firms. But of course you’re taking that another step tinier via the concept of time-shares. And the stratification helps to mitigate risk.

However, what about specialization (yes the notorius philosophy of Adam Smith and/or Fredrick Taylor, Ford Motors, etc.)? Can the “renaissance person” be as efficient as the “robot” that does 1 (and only 1) thing day in and day out? This has been hotly debated for decades — if not close to a full century. I recall the case of a Volvo study where workers increased their productivity because of job rotation (”variety is the spice of life”). But, this was rotation among a small set of jobs — all quite similar, all somehow related, all ending in a Volvo (I guess). If the jobs are entirely unrelated, I suspect the “cost” of learning several jobs could be quite significant (and would result in only “sufficiently good” results rather than “excellent” results).

Nonetheless, a “sufficiently good” observed economy may nonetheless in reality be better than one that is observed to be “excellent”(?).

Sohodojo Jim and Timlynn said:

For those who might be interested in digging deeper into the insights that Mark has raised in his excellent post, we encourage you to read an installment of The Nanocorp Primer first published in May of 2000: Role/Actor Scenario Patterns: The A-Team and the Sandbox, subtitled A Pattern to Enable Nanocorp Replication (AKA New Economy Job Creation). (That ‘New Economy’ phrase sure dates this piece doesn’t it!)

Would like to look into this — is it available?

Another failure mitigating factor is that a nanocorp (the networked solo or family-based entrepreneur) is very likely to be a concurrent rather than a serial entrepreneur, that is, to live what Charles Handy calls a Portfolio Life. In this way, the Portfolio Life nanocorp avoids the catastrophic meltdown of having ‘all your eggs in one basket’ or business.

Germany is known for its rather large number of Mittelstand firms. But of course you’re taking that another step tinier via the concept of time-shares. And the stratification helps to mitigate risk.

However, what about specialization (yes the notorius philosophy of Adam Smith and/or Fredrick Taylor, Ford Motors, etc.)? Can the “renaissance person” be as efficient as the “robot” that does 1 (and only 1) thing day in and day out? This has been hotly debated for decades — if not close to a full century. I recall the case of a Volvo study where workers increased their productivity because of job rotation (”variety is the spice of life”). But, this was rotation among a small set of jobs — all quite similar, all somehow related, all ending in a Volvo (I guess). If the jobs are entirely unrelated, I suspect the “cost” of learning several jobs could be quite significant (and would result in only “sufficiently good” results rather than “excellent” results).

Nonetheless, a “sufficiently good” observed economy may nonetheless in reality be better than one that is observed to be “excellent”(?).