I’m not against big businesses. I’m a fan of Google and Apple (who couldn’t be?). I’m in love with the spirit Nike had in the period of their pre-21st-century glory. I love the confidence with which companies such as Diageo, Heinz and Ford go about what they do. I was in awe of the creativity and focus of Mazda and Panasonic. But there’s something about big companies that’s beginning to worry me quite a lot.
It’s that being big makes you a bully and makes you go prematurely deaf. Being big makes you think ‘There’s my way and then there’s my way.’ Most of all, being big makes you an enemy of marketing. The big decisions you make will be about downsizing, consolidating and acquisitions. They should be about marketing decisions but they won’t be.
If you get too big to focus on marketing, give up.
Small businesses are about the future. They are about innovation. They are about learning. They are about being busy doing important things – sometimes too busy. And if they have a problem it’s that sometimes they’re so busy they don’t spend enough time focusing on their most important assets: their customers and their marketing.