The Enterprise in the Sky

I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a company an “enterprise, “ and I’d love to say I’ve cracked that one. I’m sure Wikipedia could serve up a compelling distinction, but I don’t have access to Wikipedia right at the moment. Because I’m typing this on my laptop, somewhere over the Atlantic ,en route to Ireland.



So I’ll focus instead on what makes an organization a “Virtual Enterprise” or “Enterprise 2.0” or a “Small Virtual Enterprise (SVE).” I’d like to trademark that last one as it’s probably going to get used quite a bit by me in future posts. To me a virtual enterprise is highly distributed; flexible in how and where work is conducted; composed of a core group of employees who in turn manage the output of a team of specialists. Those specialists are not employees (but they may play one on TV). A virtual enterprise can respond very quickly to changing needs (internally) and market conditions (externally). It’s not bounded by traditional enterprises constraints such as hiring freezes, assignment of office space, network and system configuration, and all the other processes that always seem to take months to implement.

Content Circles is a virtual enterprise, if my onboarding is any example. On Thursday Sri (Content Circles CEO) and I talked about my future plans, and Sri talked about Content Circles immediate marketing needs. Friday morning I came into the office, met the rest of the team, installed the alpha software on my laptop and collected together all their existing marketing materials. Friday afternoon I went back to my house in Monterey and got to work. Within 24 hours the problem had been solved.



At it’s most elemental the virtual enterprise consists of a bunch of people with laptops, who have the ability to communicate using that device. Whether seated in the same office or on opposite sides of the world, the tools are pretty much the same. I joke that our office fits inside the box our wireless router came in, which is not far from the truth. If our office gets hit by an earthquake in the morning we can quickly pack up our gear (“Does anyone know where the router box is??”) and set up somewhere else.



My thinking is getting cross-pollinated (or polluted?) by the book “The Starfish and the Spider” by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom. The authors describe in detail the difference between centralized and decentralized organizations, and the characteristics of each. Some key characteristic of a decentralized organization (a starfish) are trust, accountability and community involvement. We trust each other to do what is necessary for the business to flourish, and we dive in to take whatever steps are necessary to keep it flourishing. Another characteristic that makes us more starfish than spider is that there is no real “central” office, where all issues are funneled up and decisions are funneled down. We work much more collaboratively, only involving the key few in discussions and problem solving, for example.



Whether our company truly qualifies as a Starfish is less relevant to this blog entry today (but we’ll come back to the subject.) More interesting is our company’s IT infrastructure, or lack thereof. I believe our company network, and millions of others, are “starfish-like,” in that there really is no centralized information management system, and all constituents are the better for it. I don’t need to wonder what information sources to draw from while I’m sitting on the plane typing. I have everything I need here on my hard disk. I take responsibility for assembling that information. As does John in Marin. And Tommy in Hong Kong. And Ethan in Paris. A certain piece of software installed on each of our laptops helps us manage that information. We’re not dependent on any formal infrastructure to be fully effective. We’re not hindered by the LACK of infrastructure, in those situations where 30,000 feet of air separate us from the rest of the world



Maybe this sounds like bluster, saying “the corporate network is not critical to our business.” But that’s the great secret, or weapon, of the virtual enterprise/starfish. By cutting out non-critical functions, removing complexity, and concentrating resources on the core business, we and millions of other like organizations are able to move at a pace that was unthinkable even ten years ago.