The Entrepreneurial Free Agent and Dejobbed Small Business R&D Lab
Rants and Raves #02
Few Heads, Many Hats...
<< Previous issue]  [Next issue >>

Table of Contents

1. The 'Few Heads - Many Hats' nanocorp management dilemma
2. Why nanocorps? Why now?
3. Points of interest at the dojo

1
The 'Few Heads - Many Hats' nanocorp management dilemma - A preliminary report...

But alas, Avantos bit the dust. However, ManagePro, at its long-standing version 3.2 is still available in both single-user and multi-user versions at the ManagePro site. (Performance Solutions Technology, LLC. of Seal Beach, California, acquired rights to this still-brilliant piece of software. They offer a 30-day free trial version.)

ManagePro still has one of the most innovative, user-configurable user interface frameworks of ANY commercial software we have seen. For this reason, ManagePro is in our 'Software Hall of Fame'.

In search of a nanocorp-friendly team-management software solution

When we tried to use the multi-user version of ManagePro on our current TCP/IP-based intranet, we hit a bump. (Note: If you don't need multi-user access or you are on a more traditional corporate LAN, take a look at ManagePro for your project management needs.)

So, with ManagePro as our standard, we went looking for an Internet-aware, multi-user, team-oriented, role-based project and task management software solution to our nanocorp many-hats problem.

WE KISSED A LOT OF FROGS SO YOU WON'T HAVE TO! Jim spent the better part of his waking hours for five days downloading, installing and testing every piece of project management, team management, time management and personal information management software he could get his hands on. The effort was agonizing, but enlightening.

Bottom line? We have a front-running candidate for the JFS Consulting nanocorp management system! We'll identify it in next week's newsletter and have more to say about it then. In the meantime, we'll admit to our TOTAL surprise that both the first and second place solution candidates are JAVA-based!?!?

2
Why nanocorps? Why now?

• Radical transitions in the work place are displacing large numbers of people who, voluntarily or involuntarily, opt-out of the workforce. This is the 'too young to retire, too old to be hired' dynamic. (Last year's corporate downsizings disproportionately targeted Baby Boomers. Why retrain an expensive employee when you can get a recently educated newbie for a third the price? Timlynn is actively researching these nanocorp-related workforce dynamics and associated labor statistics and will have a full report in an upcoming newsletter.)



• The 'cash-out, move to the country and set up a Mom and Pop Shop' option of becoming a 'big fish in a small pond' is disappearing. Small town customers increasingly use e-commerce rather than shop locally, just as their urban counterparts are doing. (The fleet of FedEx and UPS trucks running all around small town and back roads America is helping to kill the brick-and-mortar local small business.)



• 'Betting the farm' on a single specialized business is inherently risky in both traditional and web-based business. This leads to 'feast or famine' and SIBDS (Sudden Infant Business Death Syndrome) dynamics.



• Free markets instinctively stabilize around a small number of (accretively grown) market leaders.



• There are always 'unfilled spaces' in the marketplace which are considered too small or whose potential is unrecognized by the stable market leaders. These 'unclaimed bits' cannot easily be aggregated by large secondary players in the market, and these bits are not generally persistent over full-term corporate life cycles.



• The current model for home-based business is partitioned around two primary forms;
  
  
  • service-based specialization, and
  
  
  
  • 'get-rich-quick' multi-level and network marketing schemes
  
  
  
  (Service-based specialization through independent contracting is 'putting a happy face' on our new transient, Disposable Workforce. Multi-level or network marketing puts a new face on the same old business model of accretive growth and specialization with a healthy dose of lazy-man's greed thrown in.)



• The marketplaces for 'self-help' and 'alternative lifestyles' products and services are huge and growing. Among the more interesting is the 'voluntary simplicity' movement. This 'green' approach to Life and Work is epitomized by such best-selling works as Your Money or Your Life and Die Broke. (These and similar books have much to offer in terms of raising readers' consciousness and helping to develop financial management tactics relevant to a sustainable, happy life. But they do little to suggest a complimentary, self-employment business model to sustain such alternative lifestyles.)

The nanocorp business model - A response to trends and opportunities

Social trends and market opportunities beg the development of a sustainable, Internet-based business model which does NOT assume that 'Bigger is better' nor that 'How much is more important than how well.' Neither accretive growth nor disproportionate wealth production are required to achieve business and personal success.

Our response to this perceived need for a viable, home-based business model is envisioned in the 'nanocorp'; the ruthlessly small, Internet-based, diversified corporate conglomerate. A nanocorp is an internet business-incubator, writ small, with a few strategic twists intended to keep it working the 'empty spaces' in the marketplace dominated by the Market Titans Du Jour.

A nanocorp perspective on new job and wealth creation

Interestingly enough, the apparent constraints self-selected by the nanocorper---no accretive growth of the workforce, and quality of Life optimization over wealth production---do not preclude a nanocorp from producing substantial returns in terms of traditional business measures; job creation and wealth production.

We'll create new jobs through the incubation of new nanocorps and through outsourcing non-core workload to conventional business (the nanocorp being a subtype of virtual corporation in this regard).

We very well may generate greater financial returns than necessary to sustain the targeted quality of Life. If this is the case, we'll just have to learn to deal with it!

3
Points of interest at the dojo

In case you missed our first issue of sohodojo's Rants and Raves newsletter, you'll find both text and HTML versions here in our newsletter archive.

The premiere issue of Rants and Raves contains a (relatively) cogent explanation of 'What is a nanocorp?' and introduces our nanocorp, JFS Consulting, as a prototypical 'ruthlessly small' diversified corporate conglomerate.

sohodojo-sponsored webrings

Sohodojo hosts two webrings; one to showcase nanocorps and their subsidiary web businesses and the other to humorously encourage website integrity through the solicitation of strong negative feedback and suggestions.

The Master WebRing of the Nanocorps is a 'ring of rings' where individual nanocorps showcase their subsidiary web businesses. Each nanocorp links to the ring through an 'Open Business Model' doorway page, and each of the nanocorp's subsidiary businesses link to their respective sub-ring through an Open Business Model page as well. Go to the homepage for the Master Webring of the Nanocorps.

The Open Fork Alliance, while not exclusive to nanocorps, serves member sites which are dedicated to an "Open Fork Policy"... that is, we fully disclose and resolve any 'Fork-O-Grams' sent to our sites via the 'Fork-O-Gram' service provided by the good folks at Forkinthehead .... because flawed websites deserve a fork in the head!

Since a nanocorp is only as good as the personal reputations of its founder/owner/only-employees, it follows that nanocorp-owned websites are seriously interested in ensuring the highest quality of a website visit. Visitor relations are paramount.

Click on the link here for the homepage of The Open Fork Alliance.

Have you tried the best mind-food on the Web?

You haven't lived until you taste our RIBS? That's Really Important Books and Stuff. Like fifty zillion other sites on the web, we are an Amazon Associate (USA and UK). But we believe in freedom of choice, so check out the FatBrain and Half.com options to enjoy the RIBS we recommend too. We've put together the essential nanocorper reading list.

Particularly appropriate to these first two issues of the newsletter, you should consider reading Faith Popcorn's "Clicking: 17 Trends that drive your business -- and your life."

And for a wonderful 'heady' read, either for the first time or if you haven't read it since its early seventies publication, we suggest Buckminster Fuller's "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth." The insights you will reap from this book regarding the dynamics shaping the Internet-based information-services economy make OMSE a perfect read for the New Millennium.

As always, thanks for reading this issue of sohodojo's Rants and Raves newsletter,
    --Jim Salmons and Timlynn Babitsky--
    Hosts, sohodojo

Endpiece
About the sohodojo Rants and Raves newsletter

We'd like to keep sending you our weekly newsletter. By making it weekly, we guarantee it will be short. Okay, occasionally, when we get on a good rant we might drag on a bit, but we'll try not to do that too often.

We know you have a hectic, busy life. It isn't easy remembering to drop by sohodojo to see what's brewing. The newsletter addresses this need. You get an easy way to keep abreast of what we're doing and thinking at the dojo. We get a chance to entice you to visit http://sohodojo.com if a newsletter topic sufficiently piques your interest.

Please, feel free to forward this newsletter to others you think may be interested in knowing about sohodojo, the nanocorp and our approach to the Internet-based small business revolution.

To subscribe to sohodojo's Rants and RavesRants and Raves, send email (from the email address on which you want to receive the newsletter) to:

Note: Our newsletter is no longer active.

with the word 'unsubscribe' in the 'subject' line (from the email account that receives the newsletter.)

Thanks for reading sohodojo's Rants and Raves newsletter.

© 1998-2010 Sohodojo, Inc. | Our Privacy Statement
"War College" of the Small Is Good Business Revolution
Website design and hosting by Sohodojo Business Services,
A Portfolio Life nanocorp

[ Support Sohodojo ] [ Translate page ]
[ Search site ]