Sue Woodward: Opinion piece – Greater Manchester Business Week

An opinion piece in Greater Manchester Business Week by Sue Woodward, Director of the Sharp Project.

Carrying lots of new toys into meetings with you since Xmas? Did Santa slip a new HTC Desire HD into your stocking, or even an Apple iPad? Did you download to your Kindle; make a Messenger group so you can Ping at will? Hook up the Xbox Kinect, not for fun, but for video conferencing? Upload all the new movies or download your own, home-made on a new teeny weeny pocket-sized Flic?

No doubt you have filed your January VAT on line. Or did you close the door, turn on the fairy lights and wish, like Sir Elton John, that we could turn the internet off for just five minutes – as one small SME company director confessed to me last week? Welcome to the world in the second decade of the new millennium. And hold on tight. Things will move even faster.

This pace of technological change, the way it permeates all aspects of our domestic and business lives, every day, every hour, can be overwhelming. But it can also be liberating, enabling smaller companies to compete with and beat larger organisations as the cost of equipment plummets and the functionality increases.

Way back in the 60s, advisers to PM Harold Wilson talked of the “white heat” of the technical revolution and appointed a Minister Of Technology. The new lot at No. 10 thinks it is about designating part of the Olympic 2012 site as the new Silicon Valley. Deep Sigh.

Here’s the news for 2011 – we are living in a state of permanent revolution beyond the behest of politicians. It is being driven by the new power brokers who will make trillions of pounds by creating that which we don’t know we need yet. Geeks will rule. So what defines this new model? The answer is Geekonomics. It’s non-corporate, but it’s cooperative. Sharing provides overall gain for all participants – collaboration is the new way of making money.

Geekonomics will deliver growth through the sharing of knowledge and open access to advances in technology. It does this in a physical environment which creates affordable entry points, helping create businesses that achieve higher productivity through greater innovation, all at lower cost. Wealth creation is made accessible across a wider demographic. Markets no longer determined by a price mechanism based on scarcity or access to resource. Sounds too good to be true? Here’s the reality – businesses can be driven and thrive from a base in converted shipping containers (See www.thesharpproject.co.uk). They link to a global customer and production base via a high speed link made affordable by new Geekonomic business models. So, rather than outlay a year’s rent against a lease, take it a month at a time. But in doing so, sacrifice your air-con and the receptionist.

Share the cost of capital equipment. Talk to your next shipping container neighbour and build business opportunities together in a reduced cost environment which removes risks from the business but fosters innovation and delivers shared profit.

Then move up to the next level of space – the office. Still no air-con but windows which open. Throw in social space which fosters conversation and collaboration and you have a base for a new wave of entrepreneurs who will create the new jobs. Not another Silicon Valley or idea imported from California which makes a snappy soundbite for a politician, but a place for homegrown talent to invent our futures.

A reminder. Steve Jobs, the man who invented Apple, dropped out of college, dabbled in philosophy and created what would become one of the world’s largest corporations in his adopted dad’s garage. Not many homes with garages in Newton Heath. Good Job we’ve got shipping containers then.

http://corporate.menmedia.co.uk/greatermanchesterbusinessweek/