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Decoupling Corporate Metrics

The starting point for our scenario was the Shifting Networks of Small Firms scenario.

This is one end of a size of corporation spectrum, at which we may contemplate the possibility that there is a breakdown in the simplisitic relation between size of corporation and size of accomplishment, so that major effects are achieved by small players.

To understand this you have to unpick the notion of "size", because we are really talking about greater independence between various metrics. A corporation can be large in many different respects, here are just some of them:

  1. It may have many employee's.
  2. It may have valuable assets or high capital value.
  3. It may have a large turnover.
  4. It may have large profits.
  5. It may be very influential.
The scenario we are discussing here is really about the decoupling of the first of these metrics from the rest. It is increasingly the case that companies with small numbers of employee's are becoming large in terms of any or all of the other metrics. The question may then be asked: "what is there that a large corporation can do better than a small one?". If we have difficulty in answering this question then we may expect the ongoing decline in large corporations and proliferation of small.

In terms of our special interest in The Future of The Future it is the decoupling of the last of these metrics from its predecessor which is of interest. For if this decoupling were to happen then we might find that certain very small corporations were exercising an influence on the future completely out of line with their significance as measured by the preceding metrics.


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