Make Your Small Business the Next Google

Alright, so perhaps the title is a little grandiose, but small businesses and organizations can definitely learn a thing or two by using some of the methods that successful companies like Google have used to get where they are. Here are the important points:

• Google was once a small business
• Google has come up with lots of innovative new ideas
• Many of those ideas have occurred as a result of their “20 percent time” policy, which encourages its engineers to spend one day a week working on their own projects, unrelated to work – including AdSense – one of their most lucrative products, which brings in a large part of their > $1billion in quarterly revenue
• What could happen in other small businesses if they also paid employees to be creative?

Now, before small business folks get their hackles up, i am well aware that for most small businesses, allowing their employees to spend 20 percent of their time on things that don’t make immediate money is probably not a wise business decision. Joe’s Sports Bar is not Google – it’s an entirely different business model. But there are some similarities. Both have employees who have some creativity in them – even part-timers. Both organizations must innovate to thrive, and should always be looking out for competitive advantages by creating new products, services or experiences. A big similarity between Google and Joe’s is the need for real commitment to employee innovation and involvement. Here’s why:

If Google were to have merely hoped that their engineers would produce the next great new Google product nights and weekends, they probably would not have AdSense today. Similarly, if Joe’s Sports Bar merely hopes that its employees will come up with fresh new food, service or entertainment ideas on their off-shifts, they might be missing out on the next great product or service as well.

Here are some ideas for how small businesses might adapt the Google recipe of commitment to achieve breakthrough results – many of them with the help of BigTreetop.com, which is designed for the efficient generation and voting of new ideas as a community:

• Pay employees to spend 15 minutes per week logging in to BigTreetop.com to share their stories, ideas and votes with the community ($2-5 week?)
• For businesses without employee computers, put a simple used internet-enabled computer ($200) in the employee break room or office and pay employees post an experience or idea at the end of each shift
• Give a cash reward, choice of shift or day off to any employee who has their idea implemented in the business
• Give all employees a small percentage of the profit for a product that they collectively develop and implement

The obvious upsides to this sort of approach are more involved, happier employees, better products, and a more developed ability to adapt to the market - especially when using a platform like BigTreetop to vet ideas with both customers and employees. There is no downside except for a small investment in the form or employee pay or rewards.  Google seemed to think that was worth it, and it’s worked pretty well for them so far..

What do you think? Are these ideas feasible? What are some other ways a small business could achieve similar results? Are any of you using good methods now to innovate your small business?

Beating the Wal-Mart Effect

My wife and i spent a romantic Friday night watching The Corporation,

and Wal-Mart: The Hight Cost of Low Price,

and though we had known it before, it became even more clear what the mission of BigTreeTop.com is, and that is to do our part to prevent two things:

1. The “Wal-Mart Effect” on small business (small businesses dying off as a result of large businesses moving into a community and exerting their pricing influence past where smaller businesses can compete), and
2. Corporatization of America (consumers and employees becoming less aware and less involved in the organizations that shape our lives)

These two things have exerted a heavy influence on SMB’s in America for quite a while, and many have gone out of business by trying to beat big businesses at their own game. It’s our idea that the game needs to change altogether – especially where SMB’s are concerned. Here is a little graphic of the two forces i seem to see exerting influence on the SMB today. On the right is the still-dominant paradigm for business. On the left is the new paradigm we’re proposing:

BigTreeTop’s contribution to the solution is by starting with small and mid-sized businesses and organizations, to provide a platform that will help them to more easily adopt co-creative practices with their employees, customers, and business partners, by involving them in some decision making, story-telling, community and partnership-building and creation of value itself. We are sure it will have at least the following two effects on small business in local economies:

1. It will help to stave off the Wal-Mart effect on SMB’s and their local economies by improving the advantages they already have over large businesses trying to exert their influence: real community, adaptability and customer loyalty beyond just product and service value
2. It will provide consumers with increased ownership of the success of their local businesses and economy

..and we are reasonably sure that it will have the following two effects on the big businesses in the national economy:

1. Large organizations will be forced to involve employees and customers in deeper co-creation as a source of real competitive advantage.
2. Deeper co-creative involvement of customers and employees in large organizations will lessen their ability to take part in unsustainable business practices.

What we’re proposing is a pretty radical new way of thinking about organizations and their boundaries which suggests that, with the right platform and process in place, an organization which blurs its boundaries and emphasizes the deep involvement of its community of employees, customers and business partners will be more successful than an organization which does not. We think that SMB’s and smaller non-profits can benefit more naturally from co-creation, since it merely magnifies what they do already – which is to be a part of a real-live community of people who are concerned not only about the cost value of a business’s products and services, but about the business itself, its people and its existence within a local and national economy.