I’ve always admired small companies and their abilities to come up with innovative ideas and elegant solutions in very reasonable time.

Its all about communication.

Small companies enjoy friendly and productive communication where the point of having meetings is to agree on things rather than disagreeing on them. On the other hand, big companies suffer from formalities and bureaucracy. Their meetings are about achieving personal agendas rather than providing practical solutions.

What surprises me the most, is the desperate attitude of some small companies to act big and to adapt to the corporate culture . As if you act bigger your revenue is going to increase. They don’t understand that having long meetings is a problem. They like to add more and more managers and directors to the point that they can’t get anything done because of the bureaucracy overhead.

What these companies don’t realize is that their size is their biggest advantage. They are more likely to satisfy the ever changing market demands than bigger companies.
If you are in the entrepreneurship business, you already know that plenty of the new ideas presented under big companies were actually made by smaller companies, or individuals. del.icio.us and upcoming.org are only few examples. These cool websites were 1-man projects…. Yes only one man, he is the designer, the developer, the project manager and the owner.

Big companies rather to buy smaller companies applications than trying to implement their own. The corporate philosophy is it cost more to build than to buy.
If you are small company owner, your company size is your biggest advantage. So don’t try to lose your friendly culture while big corporates are spending big money to restore theirs.