Comments on: glue

By: Stephen

Stephen — Mon, 02 May 2005 07:56:00 +0000

Thanks, David. That makes sense I guess.

By: David Burn

David Burn — Mon, 02 May 2005 00:57:56 +0000

Stephen,
Tom Peters dot com is a group blog, and Tom does make the occasional post. I think it’s only confusing when thinking about Tom Peters as a man, when like Ralph Lauren (and many many others), Tom Peters is also a brand.

By: Step

Step — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 08:54:45 +0000

A little off-topic, but something I just wanted to ask. I followed the link to Tom Peters blog/site. It seems that Tom Peters doesn’t actually post anything there. I’m relatively new to reading blogs, so if I’m missing something, let me know. I just thought it was kind of weird that he would have 3 or 4 other people posting, but he himself is absent.

By: Jon Husband

Jon Husband — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:39:53 +0000

Linky thinking … it’s more than anything a mindset, an attitude, and a way of working based on understandings and agreements.
… rather than instructions or top=down imposed objectives.

By: nick

nick — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 17:22:59 +0000

“Tom Peters has written about a future scenario where multi-billion dollar corporations are successfully run with only seven employees.“
sounds like Charles Handy’s “shamrock organisation” to me…

By: Christian Mogensen

Christian Mogensen — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 17:02:19 +0000

The loose confederation where the company is a single node in the net (as Steve Cooper described it) is like a Keiretsu. The problem is that the network ossifies and becomes rigid, because the players become overly dependent on the relationships in the network.

By: Steve Cooper

Steve Cooper — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 15:35:18 +0000

Interesting. Is a loose confederation of skunkworks, (or LCOSW, or skunkworks,) one company, or many? That is, is your multi-billion dollar company a single skunkworks in the confederation, or the whole confederation?
If it’s the former — the single node in the skunknet — then things get pretty interesting. I’m thinking it probably can’t be fantastically profitable for a single node, though it can be pretty good for every node.
Take as an example a LCOSW that makes, say, a consumer electronics product like iPods; each node creates a bit of value — making hard disks, or batteries, or software — and other SW’s assemble them into products, or produce marketing material, or distribute it.
But since they’re seperate companies, between every SW pairing (eg, final assembly -> distribution) there’s going to be a levelling of profits; if the ‘distribution’ nodes make obscene profits, the ‘final assembly’ will demand a piece of the action; their suppliers will demand a piece of –that-; and so on. The whole network becomes profitable, but no node shovels in the cash.
Put another way, each skunkworks can be competed with by new, potential skunkworks. Since a skunkworks is cheap to start, competition will drive prices down. Anyone who demands too big a piece of the pie will just be routed around and starved off the network.
Steve