SustainableWork

We voted with our feet and chose the area of Madison, WI to raise our family and to grow our businesses. Next to getting married, it was the best decision we ever made.

What higher recommendation could I make? I'm still thrilled with that choice 30+ years later.

I've started a number of new enterprises from this region since then, and now I get to work from here, helping folks launch their new businesses.

The eight counties of South Central Wisconsin have been rolling out a unified front for economic development in this region and I'm really delighted to see the progress being made. This area is a fabulous platform for creating new enterprises and improving your life.

That's why I really like the name they recently gave their new organization, Thrive.

For anyone looking to launch or grow a tech based enterprise, this is an ideal place. The research support and connections here are world class.

For those of us working as independent entrepreneurs (IEs), this place is perfect.

In both of the last enterprises we ran from the Madison area, we had customers on 5 continents. There are just no limits to the transportation and communications resources available here for the independent entrepreneur.

And yes, while we worked globally, I was also able to readily build an excellent regional economic base because of our easy access to Milwaukee, Chicago and the Twin Cities. All the early, sustaining, pay-the-bills, orders arrived from this hub. And we were in the middle of it, in a really lovely, invigorating environment, doing great startup work.

The world is only so virtual. You also need to show up. Being in the middle of this very valuable, and economically diverse region puts you on the doorstep of millions of people, representing countless different markets and industries, with relatively quick drives. And you get to be virtual the rest of the time, in one of the most beautiful and dynamic places on earth.

I believe that knitting together all the stakeholders in a project like this is tantamount to herding cats. The folks that have brought the new Thrive organization to this point should be thanked heartily and congratulated.

With the launch of the new name, Thrive has also named a new Chair. He is John Biondi, who I had the great pleasure of meeting with last fall. John has a rich and interesting track record working with science based high tech firms. After talking with John I am also firmly convinced he is strongly committed to independent entrepreneurs doing sustainable work.

I knew I would like John, when I showed up at his office and he was the only one in jeans, surrounded by suits. John said it was casual Friday, but that seemed to have caught everyone else off guard. John seems fully capable of declaring casual days all on his own, which I greatly admire. Also seems like a great metaphor for the kind of work we do in our region.

While Thrive rolls out and begins to focus on its key sectors, they will also be making resources available for anyone interested in starting or growing their enterprises in our smart, beautiful region.

If you would like help from the perspective of an IE that lives and works in this region, get in contact. Better yet, visit one of the gems of our region, Monroe, WI on Jan 7th. I'll be sharing a talk that evening with their Entrepreneur and Inventor Club meeting. The focus of this talk is on innovation and invention for the independent entrepreneur. I'll link info below. Stop by and let's meet.

When I think of all the wonderful cities, towns, villages, open spaces, natural treasures, coffee stops, pie places, great bowls of soup, and all the inventive, amazing small businesses I know about in our region I can't imagine a better place to work from. I've started thinking about all of them as 'Thrive-Points'.

Thrive is a great new name for a wonderful region to live and work. Get in touch with Thrive (below) or meet me in 'Thrive-Point' Monroe!



Thrive the newly named regional economic development organization for the best place on earth to locate and grow yourself and your new enterprise.

Download the Green Co. Entrepreneur and Inventor Club press release here. From Idea to Manufacture: The Process of Invention.

C5-6 Technologies John Biondi is the President of C5-6

Labels: entrepreneurship, platforms, startups, The slow start up movement

The most recent issue of Barron’s (12/25/06) ran an interesting cover story called 'Sizzle Inc.'.

The Barron's writer, Johnathan R. Laing, interviewed the principals of the international research firm GaveKal. I’ve ordered the book. More in future posts.

The subtitle of the article is “For the US, developing the sizzle is now just as important as selling the steak. Shedding risk and stabilizing the economy by making products abroad.”

While this outsourcing article is directed at large businesses, their ideas about creating value are useful for start ups and emerging enterprises.

The GaveKal research shows that the spreading of the economic risks, as represented by outsourcing, is slowing the total amount of volatility we all feel. The suggestion is that macro and micro economic systems become better balanced, less volatile and more valuable as they become increasingly integrated

Those of us in economically better developed countries need to plan our enterprises carefully so as to be able to make the most appropriate contributions.

The Barron's/GaveKal piece talks about platform companies. These are organizations that are highly focused on their core competencies. Core competencies are not static placeholders used to fight off change. Unique core competencies are platforms for growing new solutions for your markets.

Here's what the article says about platform companies, "Platform companies require far less capital because they concentrate on product development and sales, leaving to parties abroad the heavy financial lifting entailed by manufacturing."

As a side note, I agree that manufacturing is the heaviest lifting at big global scales, but for small and emerging firms, the ability to uniquely and innovatively manufacture products is entirely viable. I’m watching many examples of this in my day job. The art and efficiency creative enterprises are able build into manufacturing can be a great core competency in the emerging world of smaller, more specialized production runs.

I think of great short run manufacturing capability as the ‘D’ in R&D, research and development. Great short run manufacturing is always adapting, always getting smarter, often out in front.

That said, the platform model in the article focuses on the three legs of a sustainable economic structure: R&D, design and sales/distribution. Then, they recommend, outsource the rest.

Outsourcing is a controversial term, but remember, for start ups and emerging enterprises, outsourcing doesn't need to be across oceans. Outsourcing for start ups can also be the folks just out your back door, or your next UPS/FedX visit.

The solutions you provide to real problems are your platform. You plug in the rest of the world as needed.

I put up a post about how well this worked for us (Fri., May 13, 2005 'Remote Partnering'). We outsourced out our back door, literally, and it worked very well for many years. We outsourced an expensive manufacturing step we didn’t feel we needed to invest in. We bought into excess vendor capacity. The vendor added to their base load, and everyone benefited, especially our customers.

I watched this platform model work successfully for more than 25 years in our first enterprise, Banner Graphics.

I define a platform company as an enterprise with a unique core competency for solving problems in their carefully identified target markets. A platform company executes repeatable solutions to real problems. A platform company has their business processes in place, not on paper.

A platform enterprise is designed to get smarter and more valuable over time, not necessarily bigger as measured by many of the typical metrics.

For entrepreneurs of any kind, I believe value emerges at the intersection of problem solving, sales, and execution.

You need to deploy these most productive assets skillfully. You have to know enough about your market to be able to approach it with authority and at the least possible cost initially. The platform concept offers this path.

Do what you do best and plug in the rest. If your solutions are valuable, other organizations will knit their platforms into yours.

The Barron's article was heavily macro economics oriented, focusing on China and mega supply chains. However, I've lived the start up side of this and the GaveKal ideas about platform enterprises are just as valuable for emerging enterprises, probably more so.

As you work on your new enterprise, don’t let yourself get caught in the common trap of trying to control all the variables.

It’s more helpful to think of your enterprise as a platform; a platform for solving problems, a platform for helping your markets, and most of all, a platform for continuously creating sustainable growth for your enterprise.

If you plan and execute well, your organization will be able to continuously create sustainable, valuable launches.

That friends, is why we call them platforms.

The Barron's article posted at Silicon Investor

The GaveKal site

Labels: Outsourcing, platforms

I like Kevin Maney's tech columns in USA Today. He's a good writer and he keeps up a nice blog about tech news.

Kevin had a piece in the paper on Nov 22, 2006 that caught my eye. He was writing about Amazon.com’s new vision for entrepreneurs. Amazon is beginning to unbundle their operations so that outside organizations can now pick from many Amazon in-house capabilities and apply them to their own enterprises.

This has been done with digital products in the past, but Amazon is gearing up to let us do this with 3D stuff, using their computers and providing physical distribution as well.

The businesses I’ve started have always sold things to other organizations. It didn’t matter what kind of organizations, just that there was a structure of some kind in place. For seed stage start ups, selling to other organizations has been a far more efficient way to start enterprises than selling things to civilians. The basis for this idea is that selling directly to the public has been far more expensive, and, most importantly, much more time consuming. Most start ups do not have the time available to waste dealing with anyone who can walk through the front door.

Obviously, that ground has been shifting daily as the internet emerges. The ability to sell directly at the retail level has been growing for the big guys as well as start ups.

The ability to keep enterprises small, fast and efficient has never been easier or cheaper. Now, the ability to sell to civilians seems to be emerging with the potential to take us far beyond eBay.

What I like about this Amazon development is that (hopefully) start ups and emerging enterprises can sell to civilians in ways they never could before, by opening different kinds of front doors.

Amazon won’t be the only portal you can do this with, but they are lighting the way. This trend will enrich the entrepreneurial community worldwide.

With the Amazon model, Kevin Maney says "You can rent space on Amazon’s computers to run a business, or to rent out its transaction capabilities to sell things and collect money, or rent pieces of its warehouses and distribution system to store and ship items - or all of the above."

Maney continues, "So with almost no start up costs, anyone anywhere could become a retailer. It's not just contracting with Amazon to sell your stuff, the way Target does. It's leasing pieces of Amazon to create something totally unrelated to Amazon."

Now, my seed stage friends, initially this is probably not set up for you. As Mr. Maney quotes Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, "We can take all the things that used to be fixed cost, and let people pay by the drink." That's code for ‘this service is going to be expensive’. At first, this is probably not for seed stagers, but it’s coming.

However, it looks to me like emerging organizations with the funding could jump right in. Storage space at Amazon distribution hubs seems to be about $0.45 per cubic foot per month. I have not used the electronic interface yet, but it's reported strength is it simplicity. The new access to Amazon's computing power is priced at a rate that looks cheap to me. This will be worth exploring. If you have a tech person on your team it would seem especially alluring.

Interesting side note. As this idea catches on, it will allow Amazon and others to offer increasingly lower costs for these services. According to Jeff Bezos, interviewed at this month's Web 2.0 conference, only 17% of the capacity of Amazon's servers are used. Mr. Bezos says it's like having a Boeing 747 and leaving it parked on the runway 83% of the time.

This move by Amazon is a clear, clarion shot across the bow of the emerging entrepreneurial culture announcing that the big guns get it. They are turning their ships to serve the needs of ever smaller enterprises with an increasing array of valuable resources. Good on 'em. Thank you Mr Bezos. I hope this idea evolves well.

Business Week did a very good cover story on the Amazon rollout in it’s Nov. 13, 2006 issue. I liked a quote there from an early adopter of the Amazon offering, Chris MacAskill, a former fierce competitor of Amazon. Chris is now president of an on line photo sharing firm, who says this about the Amazon approach, "Everything we can get Amazon to do, we will get Amazon to do. You're going to see all kinds of startups get a much better and faster start" by using Amazon services.

Is it for everybody? Of course not. Is it good news for all entrepreneurs? You bet.

As for Kevin Maney, I can't leave his column without applauding some great writing celebrating this evolving story.

"What's new about Amazon is the leap to physical products. This might be one of those evolutionary milestones, like when the first fish crawled up on land, or Jimi Hendrix discovered feedback on his guitar."

My start up friends, big new evolutionary benefits are raining down on our community at an increasing rate. Many will help you and your enterprise become more sustainable. Follow those like Jimi followed his feedback loops.

Developments like those at Amazon are leading to a lot more opportunities for a lot more people.

That includes you.


Kevin Maney’s full article at USA Today

Amazon portal to learn more

Jeff Bezos interview at Web 2.0

ComputerWorld Magazine review of the Amazon project

Business Week story on Amazon

Kevin Maney's blog

Kevin Maney’s home page

Labels: innovation, marketing, platforms