About Sohodojo
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An Applied R&D Lab Serving Solo and Family-based Entrepreneurs
Home of the nanocorp
About Sohodojo
"War College" of the Small Is Good Business Revolution
Sohodojo in Brief
Sohodojo is an independent, self-funded applied research and development laboratory with an associated education mission to support solo and family-based microenterprise and small business entrepreneurs in rural and distressed urban communities. Sohodojo is essentially a "organizational wrapper" on the entrepreneurial free agent activities of Jim Salmons and Timlynn Babitsky. We operated Sohodojo actively from the late 1990s through 2010. The site remains on-line as a wealth of provocative ideas and first-person experience reports for what it is like to envision and pursue the "Small Is Good" World as a complementary "engine" to the conventional "bigger, faster, stronger" approach of the "Big Is Good" World. We pursued two threads of interrelated activity:
- integrating existing, and creating "missing link," software technologies to support the creation and sustainability of decentralized and distributed microenterprise and small business networks (the back-end of fine-grained supply chain networks), and
- envisioning and creating Internet-based software (an E-commerce engine or front-end) to support alternative markets that function as persistent social/economic networks based on person-to-person rather than person-to-product relationships within consumer purchase dynamics.
Sohodojo is working to populate a sustainable "parallel universe" that can be characterized as the Small Is Good World. Not a replacement to or a "better than" alternative to the dominant Big Is Good World, the Small Is Good World functions as a moderator or governor to the excesses of the Big Is Good World.
By building socio-economic networks emphasizing the "Who, How, and Why" of consumer purchase dynamics, we are creating markets that are a sustainable alternative to the dominant markets based on price and distribution channel control (the "How much and Where" of consumption dynamics). The E-commerce engine of these alternative markets will be story-driven and game-oriented to maximize the creation and maintenance of person-to-person relationships.
The structure of these new entrepreneurial ventures is the extended network enterprise rather than the conventional corporate organization-centric enterprise. The most fine-grained participant in such ventures is the solo entrepreneur (the "nanocorp") rather than the employee. These solo entrepreneurs lead Portfolio Lives, participating in a collection of such network enterprises and dynamic projects, rather than living the job-centric life of the traditional employee.
Sohodojo is committed to making the results of its applied research and development available under Open Source and Open Content licenses. Research collaborations are facilitated through our world-class Advisory Board. Our First-Of-A-Kind business network is The Chandler Guild of soybean-wax candlemakers.
About Us - Founders and Research Directors
Jim Salmons and Timlynn Babitsky are founders of Sohodojo and serve a its Research Directors. Jim and Timlynn have been together shaking things up as high tech entrepreneurs and change agents since they met in graduate school in the mid-eighties.
As Sohodojo Business Services (formerly JFS Consulting) – their Portfolio Life nanocorp – Jim and Timlynn oversee a 'corporate conglomerate of us' with a diversified portfolio of dejobbed small businesses that includes their small business services and consulting practice, the Sohodojo applied R&D lab, and "sandbox"/exploratory ventures including The Local Food Economy Game, 3RBuilders.Net, Squirrelfeeders.com, and The Pop Culture Store and Virtual Museum.
In 2004, Timlynn and Jim completed a one and one-half year Sohodojo commitment to field research and social action as Director and Enterpreneur In Residence of the North American Rural Futures Institute (NARFI) at Montana State University - Northern. This Sohodojo applied research service in northcentral Montana has given us a current and diversified perspective on the state, needs, and opportunities for Sohodojo's support of rural entrepreneurism.
In 2005, Jim and Timlynn relocated from northcentral Montana to rural southeast Iowa where they continued their applied research and social action.
In 2008 following the historic flood in southeast Iowa, Jim and Timlynn relocated to the Oakhill Jackson and New Bohemia neighbood of Cedar Rapids to contribute their creativity and efforts to rebuild the city's small businesses and devastated communities.
Jim and Timlynn's business/life goal is to envision and develop Small is Good Microenterprise Networks throughout rural and distressed urban communities interested in unleashing the 'other side of capitalism'.
Contact Information
While Sohodojo functions as a virtual R&D lab accessible on the World Wide Web and performs most of our research collaboration using Internet technologies, our physical headquarters is currently in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA.
Sohodojo can be reached by telephone at 641-919-1458.
Of course the best way to get our attention is by e-mail. Please feel free to send us a note to tell us about yourself and your ideas for ways that we might collaborate.
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"War College" of the Small Is Good Business Revolution
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A Portfolio Life nanocorp