Entrepreneurs: Competing with the Big Firms

Tom Peters offers up several useful tips on competing with big organizations:

Can the small player compete in a world of Citigroups and Bank of Americas? I said it was a lark. And I more or less meant it. That is, among other things, giants— “new tech,” CRM, etc notwithstanding— will always be clumsy and impersonal relative to an “intimate local” who is really out to make a dramatic difference.

Cap Times on Media Concentration

A Capital Times Editorial on “Breaking up Big Media Concentration“:

The consolidation of American media has robbed this country’s citizens of the competing journalism, the honest dialogue and the cultural diversity that the founders intended when they wrote a “freedom of the press” protection into the First Amendment to the Constitution.

American media were never perfect, of course.

But the quality and independence of the media have suffered over the past three decades, as Congress and federal regulators rewrote the rules to make it easier for big media companies to buy up more and more of the country’s communication outlets. As recently as 1996, a single company could only own a few dozen radio stations nationally. Now, because of the rule changes contained in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, one company, Clear Channel, owns more than 1,200 stations and dominates many local media markets around the country.

Not a word about the increasing concentration of the daily newspaper business, however. The internet is addressing this question, of course.

EAA Heats Up: B17 Buzzes Madison

Click on the photos for a larger view.

The EAA’s AirVenture starts Monday. Looks like a fabulous show this year with Burt Rutan’s White Knight/SpaceShipOne paying a visit. A rare WWII vintage B17 buzzed Madison this morning. I snapped these photos in a hurry. The cell tower fly by is an interesting reflection of today’s world vis a vis 1940’s technology. More on the B17.