Fast Company’s The Beauty of Simplicity
talks about how companies are beginning to see that “making things
simple is the new competitive advantage” (which was the whole thrust of
my talk at Web 2.0 — it was even called “Less as a competitive advantage”).
The
article mostly focuses its praise on Google, Intuit, Apple, and
Philips. It’s great to see these enormous companies putting high value
on simplicity, but the real simplicity and less movement is happening
way lower down the chain with the smaller companies. Companies of 1 or
3 or 5 or 10 — they’re staying simple on purpose.
The big guys
have to force simple. The small guys are simple by default. Staying
small is the real competitive advantage. That’s real business
intelligence — understanding your advantage and milking it.
The
big guys are discovering what the small guys have always known. The
small companies leading the way and have been for years. The big guys
are following the small guys. The Less movement is bottom up, not top
down. There’s a big story here. I wonder which journalist will grab it. [Signal vs. Noise]