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Gangster business | ||||
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I came across a memorable shorthand view of the 3 types of business organisation in James Surowiecki’s “The Wisdom of Crowds”. Consider Hollywood gangster films:
In each case, a group of individuals is working together to create net profit. However, gang/business organisation differs: The Godfather (FF Coppola) This is the traditional business model with top down control by the CEO (Corleone). Different divisions are run by different managers and the business is widely diversified with plenty of capital for investment in new products & services. The problem is that the managers (lieutenants) are all looking after their own best interests (despite effective use of a baseball bat) and therefore filter the flow of information to the top. In the end, Corleone is totally divorced from reality and makes increasingly erratic decisions. Heat (Michael Mann) The business is a small coherent group (led by De Niro) where the members are able to trust one another and rely on individual ability and mutual awareness to get (the right) things done. The problem is the lack of resources (think small business) and when they recruit a gang member who doesn’t fit in, the whole thing goes horribly wrong (and there’s a fantastic shoot out). Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino) This is portfolio business the gang is assembled to do a particular job, make lots of profit and then break up. The problem is that it takes a lot of work to put the team together, you never really know where their best interests lie and trust is tricky because of the short term nature of the project. So they end up shooting one another and swearing a lot. So, how does Pacino fit in?
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