Concentration of Risk

When I talk with people about the economy, I often end up saying the same thing: Concentration of control or capital is concentration of risk. I take that as a basic assumption about economics of scale.

I was pleased to see that Peter Bregman from the Harvard Business Review agrees. In Why Small Companies Will Win in this Economy, Bregman points back to the fundamentals:

Small companies with low overhead, reliable owners, a small number of committed employees, personal client relationships, and sustainable business models that drive a reasonable profit are the great opportunity of our time.

Small is the new big. Sustainable is the new growth. Trust is the new competitive advantage.

The fact is that these are not just the great opportunity of our time; they are the fundamentals of any time. Small businesses allow for a level of trust and personal connection - among employees, and between employees and clients - that are difficult, if not impossible, for large entities to match.

Why is this so? The gospel tells us that we were made for true relatedness - with God and one another. The only way that trust and true mutual relatedness grow is in real relationships. And these thrive, not in big groups, but small. This is one of the many ways that gospel entrepreneurs can embody and offer hope in a famine of hope.