Today, David IS Goliath -OR- Big is the enemy of innovation

Does size matter?  Yes, but not the way you think.  #sickos

If you want to survive, you have to innovate.  If you want to innovate, you have to think…small.

Small teams.  Small life cycles.  Small memories of past mistakes.  Small budgets to test new things with.  Small meetings.  Small egos.  Small tolerance for a lack of passion.

Because BIG IS THE ENEMY OF INNOVATION.

Think about it.  Google is the biggest and the baddest.  But how did they get there?  They were a small company that flipped search on its head and revolutionized the web.  Now?  They’re big.  Actually, they’re HUGE.  And guess what?  They’re having trouble breaking into social.  And mobile.

Wait, what’s that?  Android is actually doing great?  Maybe so, but Google bought Android in 2005!  It was created two years earlier by just four guys.  Or in other words, a small team.

When you’re big, you think big.  You look across the wide forest you created and think to yourself how bright and sunny it is up there.  Especially if you’re in Philadelphia, where it’s always sunny.  But you can’t see what’s going on underneath the tree tops.  You can’t see that a new forest is starting to emerge that will quickly make your forest obsolete.  And you definitely can’t see that your forest analogy is #weaksauce and you better move on.

This doesn’t mean that if you work at a big company that you can’t innovate and/or survive.  You just have to think and act small.  I’ve seen it happen.  It happened at Engauge with DIG (Digital Innovation Group).

I’ll take a handful of smart people attacking a problem over a couple dozen people tackling a problem any day.  Especially if I get to pick first ;)