Ingot Tree

"Once upon a time it was easy to tell the difference between a small business and a large competitor: Big firms had access to more capital, diverse markets, better technology, and economies of scale; small companies had to make do with whatever they could afford. But as technology has advanced, that distinction has blurred. Just as mainframe computers gave way to cheap PCs on every desk, Yellow Pages ads are being replaced by low-cost websites, and regional sales forces by search terms purchased from Google and Yahoo. Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen cites overnight shipping as another of history's great leveler, giving smaller manufacturers the ability to send parts across the globe in less than a day and robbing big firms of a competitive advantage.

The past couple of years have ushered in a new wave of tools for entrepreneurs who want to play big, as software and service providers have begun to adapt their offerings-previously available only to large firms-for small businesses. "The attitude used to be, 'We're going to take this product we have for enterprise, strip out a lot of functionality, and small business is going to have to use it,'" says Chris Hazelton, senior analyst at IDC, an IT market-research firm based in Framingham, Mass. "Now companies are either building products specifically for small business or making the products modular so they're lower-priced and scalable."

The result: startup multinationals. Small firms with bigtime online security. Low-profile companies using high-powered software to perfect their websites. No-name startups with big-name shipping partners. Over the next several pages you'll meet entrepreneurs who are taking advantage of new technologies and strategies and learning a powerful lesson: It's never been easier to play big."

- From this interesting article on some interesting examples of big corporation efficiencies now available to startups.

// posted by Ingot Tree @ 3:18 PM