We are beginning to get a bit more focused here at Not an MBA. Earlier this week one of our founders penned our mission statement when he wrote “Why do you say ‘fuck’ so often?”. In that piece, Bandit articulated why it is that we do what we do. We are convinced that there are better ways to organize and manage businesses and the way people work.
Old timers like to call it ‘sustainable enterprise.’ We just call it life. Either/or thinking fades away. We see no contradiction between building awesome enterprises that generate wealth, on the one hand, and advocating a humanistic and ecologically far-sighted future, on the other . Business is the engine that drives society. It is the centerpiece of society. But it can be a cancer too. It is important that we get it right.
Some time ago we wrote about the notion of Cloud Management, the idea that, like computing power, management wisdom is quickly scattering into the clouds and is now shared by many people who aren’t ‘managers.’ Innovation is popping up everywhere, and lessons for those in the hive live there.
A couple of examples make the point. Consider Work at Jelly, a simple yet elegant and powerful thing. A community of independent workers and mobile corporate getting together every couple of weeks to work together. Organized through a wiki, first in NYC, then in Austin, Atlanta, Boston, Houston, and now the UK, Australia, India, and all over the world. A global grass fire of like-minded coworkers started virtually free with a wiki and imagination. How many companies would LOVE to be able to network globally like this within a couple of months?
Another quick example... Julie Gomoll’s latest venture, Launchpad Coworking in Austin, aims to bring a sense of place and space to the growing coworking community here. In addition to taking to heart (in the Christopher Alexander sense) the needs of space, creativity, community and vibe, she has also connected with a worm farm to take in the food waste that will be produced by the café at Launchpad. The cycle of life at the back end of the café, while cyber-foragers create new things out front…
Little things, small examples. But that is precisely the point. Innovation is about seeing things differently, seeing opportunities in constraints. It is about an independent view of life and its possibilities. Not an MBA is a huge fan of Jelly, Launchpad Coworking, and the other like-minded out runners who are building the future of business.
Cheers-
The Butcher
As I've talked with colleagues and friends around the country about LaunchPad Coworking, I get the feeling there's a tremendous amount of pent up energy for exploring innovation. Even when people express a longing for community, collaboration, and for something simply *different*, I think it's the need for inspiration and the opportunity to access and harness some of that wisdom seeding the clouds that is driving so many of us to create alternative workspaces. I love seeing all the different types of coworking groups springing up - very different models, but all addressing similar needs.
I see a perfect storm of 1) historically undervalued, right-brain, corporate 'misfits' leaving the traditional walls and halls of HQ 2) at a time when American business needs to adopt a way of thinking that these people are especially good at.
I see the various coworking implementations, along with progressive alt-work groups like Bijoy's bootstrap network, as the vehicles by which these groups will first leave and then organize themselves to deliver that value back.
Thanks Julie!