SMALLER IS BETTER

Humanity has lived for aeons in a male dominated society (even when women were doing most of the work) in which the prevailing rule seemed to be: the bigger the better. We are obsessed with the urge to grow, first as a child that can’t wait to grow up. Then as an adult seeking to grow our income, our business, our family. We seem conditioned to be striving for big, a big job, a big house, a big car, a big future.

But just like male dominance begins to wane – and, where it does not wane it is associated with backwardness – the notion that bigger is necessarily better begins to lose much of the traction it once had.

In the animal world, including the human species, the male is typically larger than the female, often translating into superior strength, power and dominance. In a world where most results were achieved by muscle strength – which by and large was the rule before the industrial revolution – size mattered and gave men a natural advantage over women and larger, stronger men and advantage over smaller specimens. But that is no longer the world we live in. Results are now mostly achieved by applying brain power and technology. Size does not matter that much anymore.

There is change in the wind. We are beginning to wake up to the notion that, maybe, smaller is better. In fact, there are good reasons to believe that scaling things down may be the key to a better way of doing things and a better future for mankind. How so?

First there is the whole matter of nano-technology and micro-technology. It is counter-intuitive, but we find that we can make many compounds and instruments work more effectively if we can bring them down in size. Particle size reduction of compounds to nano-levels allows for more precise dosage, absorption and integration. And instrument or part size reduction improves application and penetration which lead to greater effectiveness and reduced logistical cost. This field is still in its infancy and it is not hard to believe that a great deal of innovation in the twenty-first century will come from this source.

Then there is the concept of micro-finance. If we can unleash the productive capacity of entrepreneurial people all over the world by providing them with access to enough working capital to get started, there is no telling where economic growth, employment opportunity and prosperity could go, first and foremost in developing countries but also in the developed world where access to capital holds back many good people and ideas. Our public and private financing system is too focused on the big bang and the silver bullet, on getting in early on the next Apple or Google rather than the many small seeds laying in the furrows, waiting for the capital drench to come in order to facilitate germination.

In business we have found out that effective management is much better applied in small units than in large organizations. The units may be bundled in one large corporation, linked together by common culture, strategy and policy, but the company has a much better chance of sustainable success when managed at the unit level rather than from the top of the organization down. Smaller business units are much more nimble, responsive to customer needs and agile than the organization at large.

We also begin to turn away from big government. While it is unrealistic to expect that people will want to give up on the entitlements and the safeguards provided by the welfare state, there is a strong aversion of the growing size of government and the grip that government has on our daily lives. A lazy, bloated bureaucracy spitting out endless regulation is not what the American people are looking for. Nor can they afford it, with fewer and fewer people of working age paying the bills. What the American public wants (and deserves) is a small but effective government. Just like computers have been reduced in size, weight and cost while becoming infinitesimally more powerful, our government needs to find a way to focus on the few things that really matter, with fewer but better qualified personnel and deal with these matters in an efficient and effective way. That is only possible if America unites behind a national strategy and pursues its goals by applying talent and technology.

A great future for our grandchildren requires a contrarian mindset to begin to prevail. It will be predicated upon America’s capacity to wean itself from the Texan premise that bigger is better and systematically ask the question: how can we do more with less? The Dutch have an expression for this approach: “Klein maar fijn”, which means “Small but Great”. That’s what we should be looking for.