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October 18, 2010

“how do do you amplify a start-up culture inside a big company?”

3 Comments

[Down­load the prin­ta­ble ver­sion here.]

A cou­ple of days ago my buddy, Robert Sco­ble (him­self a Racks­pace emplo­yee) twit­te­red the ques­tion, “How do do you amplify a start-up cul­ture inside a big company?”

A damn good ques­tion, Robert. I thought it would make a good piece of art, hence the car­toon above. More spe­ci­fi­cally, I thought it would make a good image to go on the back of  a Racks­pace busi­ness card.

Racks­pace is a big com­pany (3,000 emplo­yees), but not big enough where they can no lon­ger remem­ber when they were a small com­pany. So maybe it’s bet­ter to start a con­ver­sa­tion (which is what han­ding out a busi­ness card does, ideally) with a per­ti­nent ques­tion, rather than the usual “Here’s why you should buy our stuff” shpeel…

Tags: Cool Office Art, Office Posters, Rackspace, Rackspace Cartoons, Robert Scoble, Startups, transforming the business place

3 Responses to ““how do do you amplify a start-up culture inside a big company?””

1. Kenny Katzgrau says:

   October 21, 2010 at 2:22 PM

   Hey Hugh,

   I love the star­tup cul­ture, and I think it’s all about encou­ra­ging your emplo­yees to han­gout with each other outside of work. When you have a tight-knit team, they do awe­some work.

   A friend told me about this post because I recently won Star­tup­Wee­kend NYC with my app, http://hangoutapp.com . The app revol­ves around com­pa­nies, like hangoutapp.com/datapipe , and then DP emplo­yees can create groups like kick­ball teams, moun­tain biking, etc. Then any emplo­yee can see all the stuff going on at a com­pany and join if they’d like to.

   A bet­ter expla­na­tion is at the site, where you can see the ori­gi­nal pre­sen­ta­tion at Star­tup­Wee­kend. http://hangoutapp.com/ . If you like the idea, let me know! It’s open to sig­nups right now, and we have some big plans for it.

   Reply
2. DCF says:

   October 26, 2010 at 9:19 AM

   ^douchechill

   Reply
3. Kenny Katzgrau says:

   November 15, 2010 at 8:03 AM

   If my com­ment deser­ved a reply as juve­nile as DCF’s, why would the mode­ra­tor approve it? Just offe­ring a legi­ti­mate res­ponse with a men­tion of what I’m doing on the side. There’s no self-promotion going on, just an honest convo.

   Reply