China, a communist country, started its economic turnaround with the concept of small organizations like Town and Village enterprises in the 70s. Many reports say that their infrastructure was the key to their miraculous growth. However, if we compare the infrastructure levels of India with that of China in early 80s, we find that the length of roads, expressways and railway tracks were all higher in India than China. During this period, China had only one resource called human resource or HR.
In the business cycle, all developed economies of the world have started with small innovations, developments and small organizations. Which grew by leaps and bounds with continuous improvement in process and technology. In the 90s, a general perception creeped in to the minds of people that Big is better and thus every country and organization competed with themselves to achieve the “Biggest Status”. Forbes list of richests, biggests and highests fueled this aspiration like a virus. Highest building, largest workforce, biggest company, largest plant, richest CEO and all sorts of permutation and combination.
Now, with the successful launch of TATA NANO (Smallest/Cheapest Car), TATA Swach (Cheapest water purifier: Threat to bottled water industry), micro financing products and other nano products, the “B” word seems to be dampening. TATA with its bottom of the Pyramid approach is poised to revolutionize the way world thinks. As C.K. Prahlad said in his theory that the real money is residing in with the people at the bottom. TATA is also planning to launch its NANO housing model where in people can get cheap affordable accommodation even during housing bubbles bursting everywhere.
In contrast Reliance has lived through its glorious days by building the biggest complexes and biggest chains. Very often people forget that every big thing is build on the platform of small products. Like the mobile revolution by Ambanis which made mobile affodable to every Indian from top to bottom of the pyramid. IBM is going small by targeting Small and medium sized companies. FMCG companies have experienced the growth by launching the smallest SKUs (shampoo/oil in Sachets).
You name the industry and you would realize that small is big. Is it the magical tool which communism invented centuries ago or is it the magical tool which capitalists are exploiting?
Rogues
