In this excellent blog ‘Bigger to feel safer‘, Seth Godin discusses the arguments for and against size in creative organisations.
Bigger organisations feel safer, get safer because of bureaucracy but that often comes at the expense of less risk-taking, thus less creativity. “In other words, hiring more people makes their useful creative productivity go down“. This is the opposite of productivity of the Industrial Age. Seth Godin’s conclusion is that “the natural scale of the [creative] enterprise is smaller than you think.”
I particularly like this quote by the way: “While the bureaucracy may benefit from more scale, the work doesn’t”
Thus in conclusion, truly creative organisations (or creative organisation subset) should remain small. They need to involve several individuals (creativity increases with exchange) but not too many (refer to Jeff Bezos Pizza rule). This is a great news for really creative organisations that are start ups!
